Ant-Man: 13 Obscure Easter Eggs & References You Probably Missed
Great things come in small packages.
Whether you're an Edgar Wright fan or not, you have to acknowledge that a profitable return on Ant-Man of over $100m so far is a monumentally successful return. It might not be the same kind of money as Iron Man or The Avengers, but considering how broken the film was supposed to be, and how many stumbling blocks the film hit well before Wright even took his creative differences elsewhere, the fact that it didn't bleed money is astonishing.
And even more astonishingly, the film entirely deserves to have made profit. It might have its detractors - seemingly obsessed with the tonal difference and the fact that it was directed by the wrong person (it wasn't) - but it's the funniest Marvel film and also one of the most charming. It makes Thor The Dark World look like an abomination by contrast, and it takes full advantage of the cinematic marvel that is Paul Rudd.
For every complaint about Wright leaving because of the insistence on links to the MCU, there are tens of reasons and references in the film that suggest precisely why it needed to be a Marvel legacy piece. This wasn't just an incredible shrinking man movie after all. And rather wonderfully, some of those references are so obscure, that finding them is incredibly rewarding for even the most ardent of fans...
13. The Shower Scene
The shower scene that acts as Lang's trial by fire (well water) is a very deliberate reference to Marvel Comics Presents #11 when Lang is almost washed away by his daughter while trying to save her ring from the drain. But not only that, it also references another Ant-Man, in Eric O'Grady, who did what any reasonable person instantly given superpowers would: using them to spy on someone else's nudity.
In the case of O'Grady, in The Irredeemable Ant-Man, he shrunk down in order to spy on Captain Marvel having a shower, because that's just the kind of guy he is. That happens to be one of the most famous modern era Ant-Man stories (and one of the most memorable), and it surely can't be an accident that Reed encouraged the parallel.
And then of course there's the fact that Irredeemable's writer - one Robert Kirkman - is credited with Thanks in the final credits.