The Animal House Easter Egg In Ant-Man That Explains The Entire Quantum Realm

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always had a bit of a boys' club vibe. The first official phase of the franchise that built up to "The Avengers" was spearheaded by Tony Stark's hard-partying ladies' man Tony Stark, while the most significant female members of the MCU to date have always been written as, at best, eye-rolling foils forced to acknowledge that most of their male colleagues are overgrown children who come through in the clutch when resolving a crisis that is partially of their own making.

This isn't much of a departure from the almost exclusively male-drawn and -written comic books of the 1960s-1980s that inspired the mostly male-directed MCU films. Aside from a boy scout like Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) or a cerebral conjuror like Doctor Strange (and maybe Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk), these guys have a good time off the clock. In a way, they have a kind of frat boy mentality.

So it makes sense that, while shooting "Ant-Man and the Wasp," director Peyton Reed found a way to work in a reference to the ultimate frat boy comedy, "National Lampoon's Animal House."

In Reed's director's commentary for "Ant-Man and the Wasp" (which you can listen to on Disney+), he discussed why he inserted the clip from "Animal House" early in the movie. According to Reed:

"As we were talking about the quantum realm, and the idea that there could be worlds upon worlds down there in the subatomic realm, I remembered that scene from 'Animal House' where they're talking about, you know, [chuckling] 'Entire universe could exist in my fingernail.' So, we were able to license that clip from Universal and just have it as a little Easter egg in the background."

The scene in question centers on Donald Sutherland's hip Professor Jennings smoking marijuana with Boon (Peter Riegert), Katy (Karen Allen), and Pinto (Tom Hulce), who's never partaken before. He's the one whose mind is thoroughly blown by the possibility that he could be housing an entire universe in his fingernail — which prompts Pinto to ask Jennings if he could buy weed from him. Sutherland's reaction to this request is a perfect capper to the scene in one of the funniest movies ever made (one that Warner Bros. thought would never work).

It's a bit of dumb fun in a franchise filled with amusingly stupid antics. Reed's superhero trilogy has its own brand of randomly funny bits as his characters, much like Pinto, contend with the bewildering expanse of the Quantumverse. Thankfully, no one accidentally kills a horse in any of the "Ant-Man" movies.