10 Small Details You Only Notice Rewatching The Umbrella Academy
7. The End Is Nigh
During the episode "Right Back Where We Started", shortly after landing in 1962, Luther has a brief and comical run in with a down and out chap who we later see walking the streets carrying a sign that reads: THE END IS NIGH. If only he knew how right he actually was!
This is an obvious throwback to the iconic graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore, which made the same phrase famous, at least in the world of mature comics, when anti-hero Rorschach wielded it on a sign during a riot.
It should come as no surprise that The Umbrella Academy creator Gerard Way lists Moore's work as a huge influence on his own writing, and he even goes as far as to say that without Watchmen there would never have been an Umbrella Academy.
The End is Nigh is also the name of an episodic Watchmen video game, which was released on Xbox 360, Steam, and PlayStation 3 to largely mediocre reviews in 2009.