Your Spoiler-Filled Guide to All the Easter Eggs in X-Men: Apocalypse

Apocalypse, One of These Days
Apocalypse has been an X-Men über-villain since he was introduced in the mid-’80s. As in the movie, he’s (probably) the world’s first mutant, born in Egypt around 5,000 years ago, where he took the name En Sabah Nur, meaning, sorta, “The First One,” never mind that that’s basically like calling it “World War I” in 1914. Unlike the movie version, who gets his expanded powers by transferring his consciousness into other mutants, on-the-page En Sabah Nur gets extra mojo from technology left behind by the Celestials, an incredibly ancient alien race in Marvel mythology. In both cases, he’s incredibly powerful…yet our mutant pals have been able to thwart his schemes for decades. The one time they almost didn’t, he had some help from David Haller (aka Legion), Professor Xavier’s mutant son. In traveling back in time to kill Magneto, the little jerk accidentally but inevitably killed his father. As a result, there was no one around to stop Apocalypse from conquering the planet, thereby dramatically altering the timeline. For about a year, all of the X-books were played out in the Age of Apocalypse timeline, until the good guys were eventually able to visit the past and prevent Xavier’s murder.

Rebooted, and It Feels So Good
Since this movie is set in the ’80s, we’re seeing a few mutants that we’ve already seen…for the first time (but with way kickier fashion sense). The epilogue to Days of Future Past provided a bit of a cap to the adventures of the slightly-older-X-Men in the near future; this movie gives us origins for Jean Grey, Storm, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Angel. We saw Jean Grey (played by Famke Janssen) meet Xavier and Magneto for the first time in a flashback that was part of X-Men: The Last Stand (aka X-Men 3), but here, she’s played by Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner. Nothing quite contradicts that earlier appearance, and the new movie is largely in line with the comics continuity. Same with Scott: the older version was played by James Marsden, and there was a cameo from a younger version in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but I think that we’re supposed to forget about that movie entirely.
Storm makes the biggest impression, with her iconic punk mohawk on full display. Her comic book origin has her born to royalty in a Kenyan tribe before her mother remarries and they move to Harlem. Though Apocalypse wasn’t involved, her movie origin has her as an orphan on the streets of Cairo following the death of her mother and stepfather, so that works just fine. We saw a completely different version of Warren Worthington III (aka Angel) in The Last Stand, and the two don’t really seem to have much to do with each other, so we’ll have to blame it on the reboot. Each version contains pieces of comic book verisimilitude, though. In the earlier movie, Warren was the wealthy son of an industrialist. Here he appears to be more of a street kid, but his metal wings and status as Apocalypse’s angel of death are in line with the comics. Last, but not least, Kodi Smit-McFee plays the younger version of Nightcrawler here. While this version doesn’t line up with his earlier origin in X2, Smit-McFee is very believable as a carny with a heart of gold who grows up to be Alan Cumming.
Bonus geek trivia! Nightcrawler’s dad in the comics is a sorta-demon named Azazel, and his mom is none other than Mystique. You can totally see it.

Noobs
In addition to new, younger, iterations of our favorite X-Persons, we welcomed new characters to the X-movieverse.
Fans of the ’90s-era X-Men animated Series (and, seriously: who is not?) will immediately recognize Jubilee, the Chinese-American mall rat with psionic energy powers. The character has cameos in several other X-movies, but she makes more of an impression here. In the comics these days, she’s an adoptive mother who’s lost her mutant powers…and also a vampire. Long story. Caliban, the mutant-tracking entrepreneur of the movie, has been around long enough in the comics to have been a good guy, a bad guy, and, more specifically, one of Apocalypse’s horsemen. Psylocke, played by Olivia Munn (and clad in a shocking page-accurate costume), is historically a British mutant who started her career as a sidekick to Captain Britain before taking over the dead body of a Japanese ninja. Before gaining telekinetic powers. She’s got purple psychic knives and mad martial arts skills, so there’s no real reason to worry much about the other stuff.
Oh, and in case you missed it: the really, really big guy was The Blob, an X-nemesis and Magneto acolyte from way back in the day. Speaking of Magneto…

Weapon X
The filmmakers managed to sneak in a surprise appearance from Hugh Jackman as Wolverine at William Stryker’s base under the dam at Alkali Lake, the same setting from X2. Upon his release, Jackman dons a Weapon X getup (well, OK, it’s mostly a helmet) that is a pretty close approximation of what we saw in Barry Windsor-Smith’s classic run from 1991, which was the first time we learned anything significant about Wolverine’s backstory. Weird thing: at the end of Days of Future Past, Mystique had actually saved Wolverine from Stryker, hinting that the entire Weapon X program might have ended before it started in this new and slightly happier timeline. Not so much, apparently.
Bonus geek trivia! A 2002 retcon taught us that it’s not Weapon X as in the letter X, but instead that Logan was the tenth subject of the Weapon Plus program, designed to create soldiers for the coming mutant-human war. Who then was Weapon 1, you ask? None other than one Captain America.

Sinister Foreshadowing
In the obligatory post-credits sequence, we see a mysterious gentleman stepping over the corpses at Alkali Lake before collecting what looks like a blood sample from Weapon X (aka Wolverine). This appears to be Nathaniel Essex, unsubtly called Mister Sinister in the comics. He’s been a big-time X-villain since he first appeared in 1987 during the “Mutant Massacre” storyline. Born in the 1800s, and given a large part of his powers by good ol’ En Sabah Nur, he’s traditionally the leader of the Marauders, a group of mutant assassins who hunt down and kill other mutants. Perhaps more relevant, he’s a geneticist who’s big into cloning. He even cloned a then-dead Jean Grey in order to manipulate Scott into marrying and having a child whom Sinister could then manipulate. Which actually kinda worked. Comics! The child, Nathan, grew up to become the mutant Cable, who is likely to appear in the sequel to Deadpool. Whether or not he’ll be Scott’s son remains to be seen. There’s also another, related possibility: Marvel’s comics’ current Wolverine is the former X-23, a female clone of Logan. If Jackman is on his way out the door, this might be a way to set up a replacement.
Bonus foreshadowing! That part where Jean Grey lit up like a torch? A torch that kinda looked like a big ol’ bird? That’s presumably setting up something similar to her comic book arc, where she develops powers on a cosmic scale as the Phoenix, before becoming overwhelmed and corrupted by them in the classic Dark Phoenix Saga.
What’s your favorite X-Men storyline?