10 Best Spider-Man: Homecoming Easter Eggs

When Ned manages to help Peter override the security features on his suit, known as the Training Wheels Protocol, the web-slinger discovers that among his costume’s countless new capabilities is a J.A.R.V.I.S.-like AI that he names “Karen.” Peter opens up to Karen while trapped in a Damage Control vault, revealing his feelings for his classmate Liz, and Karen encourages him to let her know how he feels.

Later, after Spidey rescues the academic decathlon team from a damaged elevator within the Washington Monument, Karen suggests that it’s the perfect time to plant one right on the lips of his high school crush (“Kiss her, Peter,” says Karen). It also happens to be while Spidey is hanging upside down from inside the elevator shaft, which is a clear callback to Peter and Mary Jane’s first kiss in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.

One of the best action sequences of the film takes place on the Staten Island Ferry, where Spidey attempts to thwart Vulture and his crew before Iron Man is forced to intervene. However, eagle-eyed viewers may have also noticed that the license plate of one of the cars aboard the ferry was home to one of the film’s best Easter eggs.

The license plate in question reads “SM2-0563,” which is a direct reference to The Amazing Spider-Man #2 (May 1963). Why does this matter? Because that’s the issue in which The Vulture and The Tinkerer make their Marvel Comics debuts, and given that Spider-Man: Homecoming marks their MCU debuts, it’s a rather fitting tribute.

Ever since the post-credits stinger at the end of Iron Man, audiences have been conditioned to sit through the entire run of credits to just about any superhero movie for a tease of what comes next, or a crucial plot point. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, though, fans are met with a different reward for their patience in the form of a metatextual message from Captain America about… patience.

Throughout the film, we see several PSA-style videos featuring Chris Evans’ Captain America, and after the final credits have rolled, Cap once again appears on the screen. This time, though, it’s to promote the virtue of patience, which – as he points out – sometimes offers no real reward. He then asks how many more of these things they’re going to do as the screen goes black. It doesn’t get any more meta than that.

Kenneth Choi is the actor who plays the principal of Peter’s school, Principal Morita. However, this isn’t the first time Choi has appeared in an MCU film. In Captain America: The First Avenger, Choi played Jim Morita, who was broken out of Hydra custody alongside the rest of the men who would become Cap’s Howling Commandos.

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Choi returns to essentially play his own grandson. In fact, in a scene in his office where he is speaking with Peter, you can clearly see a black and white photo of Jim and the Howling Commandos.

The third act of Spider-Man: Homecoming is home to one of the most powerful scenes in the film, which sees Peter pinned beneath a massive pile of rubble. After a moment of introspection, Peter is able to find his inner strength and muscle his way out from the wreckage.

As revealed by director Jon Watts, this sequence was lifted directly out of The Amazing Spider-Man #33. “Issue 33. That’s like especially [memorable] if you’re an old school Spider-Man fan,” Watts said in an interview with Fandango. “That’s one of the best, most iconic images ever – one of the best Steve Ditko illustrations. That’s Spider-Man. To be able to recreate that in this movie was an honor.”

While Spider-Man: Homecoming features several notable members of the web-slinger’s rogues gallery (The Vulture, The Tinkerer, Shocker, etc.), it also teases some who may prove to be a thorn in Spidey’s side somewhere down the road. For one, there’s Donald Glover’s Aaron Davis (more on him later), but the one that’s more likely to get longtime Spider-Man fans talking is Michael Mando’s Mac Gargan, who we first meet aboard the Staten Island Ferry and see again in the mid-credits scene.

For the uninitiated, Mac Gargan is the man from the comics who eventually becomes The Scorpion. Considering both he and The Vulture have plenty of reason to hold a grudge against Spider-Man, as well as Gargan’s comments about having “friends on the outside,” is it possible we’ll eventually see Sony’s plans to bring the Sinister Six to the big screen come to life?

Spider-Man proved to be one of the standout characters of Captain America: Civil War, despite his brief screen time, but his role in the film differed greatly from that of his comic book counterpart in the Civil War event. Not only did he not reveal his identity to the public (which wouldn’t have made sense given the film’s interpretation of the narrative), but he didn’t don the iconic Iron Spider suit gifted to him by Tony Stark in the comics. In Homecoming, though, we get a tease of what could have been.

When the dust finally settles following the climactic battle with The Vulture, Peter is driven to the new Avengers complex in upstate New York, where Iron Man offers him an Avengers membership, as well as a shiny new suit. While not identical to the one in the comics, it does bear a striking resemblance to the Iron Spider suit Stark builds for Peter in Civil War.

In the buildup to Spider-Man: Homecoming, there was plenty of backlash at the notion of Zendaya, a woman of color, playing the role of Peter Parker’s longtime love interest Mary Jane Watson. However, Zendaya assured fans that she wasn’t playing Mary Jane, but rather a new character named Michelle. And while it turns out that Zendaya’s character was far removed from Mary Jane, she was still MJ.

In one of the final scenes of the film, Michelle is selected to be the new captain of the academic decathlon team. She humbly accepts, then tells the rest of the team that her friends call her MJ. So while it’s true that Zendaya’s character isn’t MJ in the traditional sense, it’s still a fun nod to Peter’s most prominent love interest, perhaps hinting at a budding romance in the sequel.

Of all the Easter eggs in Spider-Man: Homecoming, none of them garner as much interest as one that comes to us by way of a seemingly throwaway line delivered by Donald Glover’s seemingly random New York City criminal character. For those familiar with the source material, Glover’s character isn’t random at all, because Aaron Davis is the alter ego of the criminal known as The Prowler. What’s even more exciting, though, is that when he’s being interrogated by Spidey, Davis happens to mention that he has a nephew that lives nearby.

To some, this line does little more than help humanize the criminal, but longtime readers know that in the comics, Aaron Davis’ nephew is none other than Miles Morales, the Spider-Man of the Ultimate Universe that recently made his way into the main Marvel Universe. Plus, in addition to confirming Morales’ existence in the MCU, the line also holds a deeper meaning for Glover, who spent years campaigning to play the African-American/Latino version of the web-slinger in a big screen reboot.

What about you? What Easter eggs did you spot in Spider-Man: Homecoming? Let us know in the comments section!