Fantastic Beasts: 28 Easter Eggs & References You Must See

The Wizarding World has a new hero and a new franchise to fall in love with. The first addition to the Fantastic Beasts spin-off series is now in cinemas, delighting fans and critics in equal measure and opening the door on lots of future possibilities, including the forthcoming Global Wizarding War pitting Albus Dumbledore against his terrifying enemy Gellert Grindelwald.

The film is a charming delight, perfectly nailing the magical spirit of the Harry Potter book series, but with a spin of its own that adds something fresh and exciting without moving too far away from the core values that captivated so many fans.

And importantly, though this is a new film, Fantastic Beasts is full of references, call-backs and Easter Eggs to the wider Wizarding World (as well as some drawn from elsewhere). And spotting them adds a whole other level of enjoyment to the film.

Here are all of the important Easter Eggs and references you need to see from Fantastic Beasts...

After the trailers heavily relied on the Harry Potter brand to sell the idea of Fantastic Beasts in a comfortable, familiar way (unwittingly pissing some fans off when they discovered it's not actually a Potter film), it shouldn't come as any surprise that the film opens with the famous Potter fanfare. The song - called Hedwig's Song, but hardly ever acknowledged as such - plays over the Warner Bros logo before the new Fantastic Beasts fanfare replaces it.

It's symbolic and almost like Warner Bros are setting out their stalls early: acknowledging that yes, this IS a Harry Potter film, and that's important, but that it's also an entirely new thing in itself too.