Jessica Jones Easter eggs: See the similarities between the comic book and the show

The first few minutes of Jessica Jones are also the first few pages of the Alias comic, and a pretty good introduction to the “hard-drinking, short-fused mess of a woman” that we’ll be seeing for the next 13 episodes. Jessica slams an uncooperative client through her door, deadpanning, “and then there’s the matter of your bill.” The entire scene, down to the dialogue, is taken straight out of the first issue.

If you’re a former-superhero-turned-private eye living in a broken-down apartment, you do your best work in the bathroom. In the first episode, we see Jessica making a call from — where else? — her toilet seat, and it’s a pretty common image throughout the Alias series.

We won’t see Luke Cage — a.k.a. “the unbreakable man” — in his own series for a little while, but Jessica Jones has already established that Marvel cares about the details. The first time we see Cage out of the comic book, he’s dressed in what might as well be his uniform, and an Easter egg for fans everywhere: his signature yellow T-shirt.

SPOILER ALERT! Though Jessica Jones only touches on the beginning of their relationship, Jessica and Luke end up as a married couple in the comics. Naturally, there are a lot more bed-breaking shenanigans, but Jessica is a hard woman to get to know, and one that likes to maintain her distance. Not only does the show acknowledge this by depicting a signature panel, but it further demonstrates how much the creative team cares about bringing important aspects of the source material to life.

Jessica’s best friend is radio personality Patricia “Trish” Walker (Rachael Taylor), who will eventually become Marvel Comics heroine Hellcat. There’s a lot of subtle nods to this throughout the series, but one of the most clever ones is when Trish gets a little too defensive after her radio show, mistakenly attacking a fan who just wants an autograph. What is the fan holding? A cover of Patsy Walker #26 (1950), a series which the character starred in before she assumed her Hellcat mantle.

During one of the flashback sequences in Jessica Jones, Jessica and Trish discuss costume suggestions and code names. Trish offers the alias of “Jewel,” which Jessica immediately dismisses on the grounds of it sounding too much like a stripper name, along with this blue-and-white outfit. In the comics, it’s this suit that Jessica uses while taking care of her superhero duties — and the code name that she used? You guessed it: Jewel. 

When Trish has her fan encounter with the man who wants her to sign Patsy Walker comic books, one of the things her admirer tells her is, “I miss your red hair.” While we’ll have to wait for another season of Jessica Jones to see how Hellcat’s role plays out, we do see in flashbacks that Trish was indeed a redhead before she dyed her hair blonde — another nod to her comic-book counterpart.

David Tennant’s Kilgrave, who forces people into unforgivable situations via mind control, is one of the deadliest, most deplorable villains in the Marvel universe. While there were a few changes made to Jessica and Kilgrave’s story in the Netflix series, there were still plenty of moments that rang true to comic panels. For example, a scene in the finale taken straight from the comics shows a stand-off between Kilgrave, Jessica, and Trish, in which he angrily orders a group of people around him to kill each other.