Just as there's more to Eddie Brock than meets the eye, there's more to "Venom:
Let There Be Carnage" than just the obvious plot beats. Here's our guide to the Easter eggs,
winks, and nods throughout the off-the-wall "Venom" sequel.
For a journalist, Eddie Brock sure seems to keep his information sources limited;
nearly every time Eddie is seen surfing the web, he's on the Daily Bugle website.
Shriek and Detective Patrick Mulligan seem to enjoy the print edition of the same paper.
Also worth noting: These San Francisco-based characters are reading the "West Coast Edition"
of what is apparently in Sony's Spider-Man Universe a nationwide newspaper, published in NYC.
For those who have never picked up a Spider-Man comic, the Daily Bugle has been around since
"Marvel Mystery Comics" No. 18 way back in 1941, and served as the location for
Peter Parker's first day job starting with 1963's issue #2 of "The Amazing Spider-Man."
Over in the MCU, the latest "Daily Bugle" depiction as seen in "Far From Home" is headed
by a much-more-visible J. Jonah Jameson, seemingly reimagined as an angry news program host and less
like the editor-in-chief of old. It's unclear if the MCU Bugle has a print edition, but even
across universes, one thing hasn't changed for Jameson: he still thinks Spider-Man is a menace.
Which brings us to the mid-credits scene in "Carnage," when Eddie and Venom find
themselves in an unfamiliar place, watching what appears to be the MCU's Daily Bugle report
that reveals Spider-Man's secret identity. As we've seen from the "No Way Home" trailer,
this moment comes right after the events of 2019's "Spider-Man: Far from Home,"
and sets off the seemingly multiverse-bending plot machinations of the third Tom Holland Spidey film.
More importantly for the immediate future of both Spider-Man and Venom,
Jameson's "reporting" also seems to turn Venom's attention to Peter Parker.
At the beginning of "Carnage," audiences are taken back to 1996, when Frances Barrison is being pried
away from Cletus Kasady and relocated from the horrific St. Estes Reform School to the even more
horrific Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane. Placed under the care of Dr. Camille
Pazzo, Shriek endures decades of isolation, experimentation, and cruelty at Ravencroft.
This is in keeping with comics depictions of the dark-gated quasi-prison,
even if some details have changed. Most notable, perhaps, is that Pazzo is now in charge
rather than the kinder Dr. Kafka of the comics. In the comics, Ravencroft is located in Westchester
County, New York rather than the outskirts of San Francisco. It has gained a reputation as
a leading maximum-security holding place for superhumans, and appropriately enough is built
on land cursed by 15th century indigenous tribes after serving as home to a cannibalistic cult.
Ravencroft is where Cletus is typically depicted as being held, and in the comics
he first encountered Shriek there — releasing the villain to help him increase his body count.
Taking its cue from DC's Arkham Asylum, in Marvel Comics Ravencroft has essentially become
shorthand for a place supervillains are sent when it's time to rest,
recharge — and plan their next inevitable escape.
In case you can't tell from his committed, off-the-wall performance,
Tom Hardy is really into playing Eddie Brock. So much so, in fact, that the intense veteran actor
is credited for the first time as a writer on "Venom: Let There Be Carnage,"
even though he was more of a "talker" than a writer. Writer Kelly Marcel, who penned both
films and has a working relationship with Hardy that stretches back nearly 20 years,
told Empire about Hardy's participation in the creation of the sequel.
"This is new for him, to get credit. It's not new for him to be this involved.
He's absolutely 100 percent committed to everything that he does."
Of the process, she explained:
"He doesn't get a pen and write. We spent months breaking the story together on FaceTime,
riffing on ideas, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't. Then I took everything we spoke
about and holed up somewhere for three months quietly, knocking out a script."
As for Hardy's love for the character, Marcel added:
"He's married to Venom. He loves this character. He's
very involved in what he thinks should happen."
"What really made you change your mind?"
"You. You did, Eddie."
Want to get real nerdy? A trailer for "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" gave a
glimpse of Detective Mulligan reading the Daily Bugle and then angrily shutting the
paper. If you freeze frame the image at just the right time and look beyond the front page,
you can read a headline that appears to say "Avengers Lose to Nightmare."
As comic fans know, Nightmare is the master of the subconscious,
a Fear Lord who is hundreds of years old and frequently crosses dimensions, often battling
Doctor Strange and the Ancient One. This is where things potentially get very interesting.
Nightmare also has ties to Morbius, the so-called "living vampire" that Jared Leto
will soon be portraying in another film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
In the comics, Nightmare once used Morbius to set a trap for Strange, allowing him to take
over the doctor's body and enter the real world — and leading to a wild fight between
Morbius and Nightmare as Doctor Strange that would be pretty amazing to see in live action.
A few hours before "Let There Be Carnage" officially hit theaters, Leto tweeted a picture
of the sequel poster along with the vampiric message: "I can't wait to sink my teeth into it."
What does all this mean? Well, there's a chance it could be a hint that Nightmare will become the
Thanos of this particular crossover, serving as a central plot point that could eventually link
the Sony universe and the MCU. Or the headline could always be referring to something else.
There are a litany of literary references throughout "Carnage,"
citing everything from Don Quixote to the Bible, but most instrumental in uncovering
the plans of Cletus Kasady might be a verse he seems quite fond of scribbling.
Venom spots the following verse on the walls of Kasady's cell and then guides his host's
hands to recreate it and other clues, including the text, "To thee the strife was given between
the suffering." This verse seems to be drawn in the middle of a sketch of the tree outside
St. Estes Reform School, where the lovestruck duo once carved a heart and the letters "CK + FB."
In case you're not up on your Lord Byron, the quote is from his 1816 poem "Prometheus,"
which details the Greek god who gave fire to man, leading to his punishment. The passage
could be a message to Shriek, who has greatly suffered but who Kasady sees as his soulmate.
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