X-Men Apocalypse: 10 Easter eggs, references and things you missed

From the obvious to the more obscure

Disney also wants Fox's entertainment assets, which include rights to the X-Men series

As with all superhero films, there are a tonne of references, Easter Eggs and comic book nods in the latest X-Men film, Apocalypse.

Thanks to the film’s release in the US, the internet has devoured the film, revealing numerous snippets of interesting info that feature in the Bryan singer-directed flick.

Here are 10 of the best. ** Spoilers below **

1. References to the other X-Men films are numerous and - at times - quite blunt. Most of them revolve around Wolverine somehow; the cage fight featuring Angel is reminiscent of the one Wolverine partakes in, while the Weapon X facility is straight from X2.

2. Another reference to the first film: when Professor X is seen briefly reading a book to his students at his school for the gifted, the book is The Once & Future King, the same book Magneto reads in his cell in the first film.

3. Wolverine and Jean Grey share a moment at the Weapon X facility, a nod to the pair’s romance in both the source material and the previous films.

4. Another Jean Grey callback; there are various moments where the character is overtaken by a powerful force, a reference to the Dark Phoenix Saga we briefly saw, an adaptation of which we saw in X-Men: The Last Stand.

5. At the end of the film, we see the new X-Men team in their outfits, all of which look very much like those from the original comic books.

6. It is explicitly said that Quicksilver is the son of Magneto, something that was true in the comics (but isn’t anymore). Meanwhile, Mystique is also Nightcrawler’s mother, another family tie that could very well come true.

7. Apocalypse’s speech about taking over the world is almost directly ripped from an episode of the X-Men TV series in which he says: “From the ashes of this world I will build a better one.”

8. If you’ve read any reviews of X-Men, the chances are they make a joke about the Star Wars reference in the film. When leaving the cinema, Cyclops and Sansa Stark quip how the “third film is always the worst”, a nod to X-Men: Last Stand (and perhaps Apocalypse itself?).

9. The song playing when Angel transforms into a more metallic, evil version of himself is Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen”, a nod to how he becomes one of the four horsemen.

10. Numerous other mutants appear in the film other than just the main cast, including the mutant dealer Caliban, Angel’s defeated opponent The Blob, and - of course - Wolverine.

There was also the post-credits scene, a breakdown of which you can read here.