Marvel's Luke Cage premiered on Netflix over the weekend, and since then eagle-eyed fans have been spotting numerous Easter eggs, including an obligatory appearance from Marvel comics legend Stan Lee.
Of course, Marvel shows and films are known for having plenty of cool Easter eggs, but it's not every day a Marvel show drops hints about a completely unrelated movie franchise. That is, however, exactly what happens in the show's 10th episode, titled "Take it Personal."
Minor spoilers for Luke Cage below!
The Easter egg (via Reddit) comes as Misty Knight is digging through microfilm newspaper clips looking for more information regarding Luke Cage's hidden past. The headline for one paper's front page reads "Son Of Local Preacher Charged With Grand Theft Auto: Two Youths Jailed After Police Pursuit." That may be important when it comes to Cage's history, but it's the article on the right-hand column of the paper's front page that is the one movie fans will get a kick out of reading.
At first glance, the article doesn't appear to be all that special. The headline reads "Martin Brown Commended: Local Inventor Receives Civic Award." Nothing too exciting. It's only as fans began to read the article itself that the Easter egg becomes apparent.
The article states a man known as Martin Brown as having invented a device called a "Thrust Capacitor," a device that could one day make time travel possible. Brown goes on to say that such a feat wouldn't be possible until plutonium was more readily available. Brown is said to be impulsive and bombastic, and got into hot water back in 1985 for including a teenage boy by the name of "Mac Fly" in some of his experiments.
Sound familiar? It's a clever nod to the Back to the Future film franchise, the series that sees quirky inventor Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel back and forth through time using their "flux capacitor"-equipped DeLorean.
Does this mean that Back to the Future and the Marvel cinematic universe are linked together? Unfortunately, not really. Back to the Future isn't a Disney property and is actually owned by Universal Pictures. That makes a crossover a little difficult. Still, it's fun to see Luke Cage's creators pay tribute to another iconic piece of American pop culture.
