[Spoilers for Black Panther]
From Oakland, CA to Ulysses Klaue’s necklace, there was a lot more happening in the background and aesthetics of Black Panther than you may have seen the first time through.
The team over at ScreenCrush has exhaustively combed through Black Panther in order to isolate 40 easter eggs that are embedded in the movie—some in plain sight and others that seem to require going through the thing frame-by-frame and zooming in. Bless these patient egg-hunters.
A few things they point out here that I particularly love: yes, some of that science fiction feel mixed in with Wakanda’s traditional African aesthetics was at least partially Blade Runner-inspired, per the movie’s production designer Hannah Beachler. She’s mentioned that Blade Runner‘s influence on the movie’s look in terms of “the forward thinking in the part tech played in that world and the density of the city. Texture and tone.”
“Killmonger defeating T’Challa and throwing him off the cataract is one of the most iconic images in Black Panther comics. So if you’re a fan of these books, this was Chekov’s waterfall. You knew something bad was going to happen here eventually.”
They also point out that “White Wolf,” the name that the children in the post-credits scene call Bucky, is a character in the comics who is T’Challa’s adopted brother and the leader of the secret police. Some fans have been speculating online whether this was just a wink to comics-readers or if it could be a sign of a new direction Bucky might go in in the future.
And perhaps most crucially: are the spots on Killmonger’s pather mask a nod to his old comics companion, the cheetah Preyy (two Ys!)?
Was there anything you spotted while watching Black Panther that they didn’t dig up here? Or anything here that surprised you in these easter eggs?
One of the things I missed the first time around until I saw a Tumblr post on it concerns the very beginning of the film. The narration wherein we hear a father telling his son the history of Wakanka is not actually T’Chaka and T’Challa, but rather, the revolutionary prince N’Jobu and a very young Erik Stevens. Yeah, I needed to cry some more today, too.
(via ScreenCrush, images: screengrab, Marvel)
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