The Flash: 19 Easter Eggs And References You Have To See

1. A Future Crisis

If he does, there's a good chance it'll be related to that headline story: FLASH MISSING; VANISHES IN CRISIS, the story reads, beside a photo of Barry Allen who doesn't look like he's aged a day. If that seems like an oddly vague and specific way of phrasing that story, well, that's because it is. That's not just foreshadowing some future tragedy for the fastest man alive, but is a specific hint at one of the biggest, most earth-shattering storylines in the history of superhero comics. And the fact that The Flash is already hinting at it with its first episode is incredibly exciting. Crisis On Infinite Earths was a twelve-part maxi-series published by DC in 1985 as a way of simplifying their incredibly messy 50-year continuity. The story was designed to bring together all the various alternate realities and timelines introduced during their half century of existence into one streamlined, user friendly setting that readers both old and new could get behind. It also involved a lot of tragic character deaths, including the famous image of Superman mourning the death of his cousin Supergirl and €“ perhaps more significant - the erasure of Barry Allen from existence, as he attempts to use his powers to stop the bad guys from deleting all of reality, instead of just bringing them all together. That blows the doors wide open in terms of The Flash's aspirations. Time travel clearly already figures into the story, what with the newspaper from the future and the appearance of Reverse-Flash in Barry's past; then you throw in the opportunity for alternate realities and multiple Earths, and things could get really crazy. The fact that they've got the cajones to hint at adapting such a major storyline is super cool as well, and suggests that fighting weather men and sentient gorillas is just the tip of the iceberg for what viewers can expect from The Flash.