Superman
The following have their own pages:
- Many many times throughout the years in the various media he's been depicted in, Superman or, sometimes, an Expy has been shown holding a car above his head pointed slightly downward in reference to the image on the cover of Action Comics #1, his first appearance.
- Superman (1939):
- Issue #324 has a Titano story called "Beware the Eyes That Paralyze".
- Issue #416 has a story called "The Ghost of Superman Future".
- The Adventures of Superman Annual #1 (1987) features a gestalt being of hundreds of alien brains in jars. The leader of the gestalt is named Hfuhruhurr, the same as Steve Martin's character in The Man with Two Brains.
- Adventures of Superman #634, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, had the Eradicator and John Henry Irons create a "charged vacuum emboitment" out of "block transfer computations" to prevent the timestorms ravaging Metropolis. And if that sounds familiar to viewers of the Doctor Who serial Logopolis, well, Abnett wrote the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip for a while, and has also done Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas and New Series novels.
- An episode where Superman finds himself in the middle of a battle between a titanic Metallo and a Super Robot. With all the myriad shout outs from other giant monsters that show up to complicate matters (including a rather literal Gorilla-Whale), you'd think the Robot would be based on Mazinger Z, and it is... due to the fact that it bears an even stronger resemblance to G. Kaiser.
- The Black Ring Black gives Lex Luthor a sidekick who bears a striking resemblance to David Tennant. Lampshaded when The Joker claims (falsely) to have killed him: "He reminded me so much of that actor, I wanted to see if he'd turn into someone else!"
- Superman/Batman #75 pays homage to Calvin and Hobbes with their own version
◊, "The Joker and Lex Luthor." - A Superman story showing "What If?... Lois and Clark had a kid?" had six-year-old Lara as Calvin and Mr Mxyzptlk as Hobbes.
- In a comic book story titled "Business as Usual", it's still 9:03 am when Lex Luthor comes up with solutions for all executive troubles Lexcorp was facing that day and Mercy asks what they'll do then. Lex says they'll do the same thing they do every day. This answer is similar to what The Brain usually tells Pinky at the end of every Pinky and the Brain episode. In Lex's case, that "same thing" is "figure out a way to destroy Superman".
- Superman's famed ability to "change the course of mighty rivers" is an implicit reference to Hercules performance of that same feat (when he cleansed the Augean Stables).
- The villain Riot's real name is eventually revealed to be Frederick Frankenstein, a reference to Young Frankenstein.
- In The Day the Cheering Stopped, Superman reads a book on Arthurian Legend.
- Let My People Grow!:
- The title reminds readers that Superman was created by two Jewish men and inspired by several biblical figures by paraphrasing Book of Exodus 5:1: "And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness."
- The third segment is named after The BBC series All Creatures Great and Small (1978).
- The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: As trashing a Luthor's robot, Superman quotes a variation of Julius Caesar's famous "Veni, vidi, vici (I came; I saw; I conquered)" phrase.Superman: "He came... He saw... I conquered!"
- The Planet Eater Trilogy: As telling Superman about the Planet-Eater, Brainiac quotes Julius Caesar:Brainiac: "One of your Earthmen once said— "The evil that men do lives after them.""
- The Living Legends of Superman
- A copy of A Tale of Two Cities is seen in the year 2,491 sequence.
- A little kid in the year 5,902 sequence is disguised as The Mighty Thor.
- "Brainiac Rebirth":
- When Kid Flash asks Superman if he could use the Teen Titans to stop Brainiac, Superman replies he would use Bozo the Clown if he'd help.
- Morgan Edge complains about Clark disappearing and "pulling a Cheshire Cat on him", in referent to the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's character.
- A 1987 comic references Monopoly with its "go to jail" card message, but reversed so the Anaphora goes before the Symploce, since going to jail is the important part, so it goes last: An officer tells Brainiac "Do not pass go... do not collect two hundred dollars... go to jail. Go directly to Jail!".
