The new MCU movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings offered a look at a brand new side of the universe. Even though it stands mostly separately from the rest of the MCU and has the closest connection to Iron Man 3 (2013), it still offers plenty of Easter eggs that will be familiar to readers of the comics.Especially to those who spent a lot of time reading older comics since a lot of the references in the film are somewhat obscure. Shang-Chi changes a lot of characters from the comics as well as existing places, and it makes more than one funny reference to the comic books. That makes the film delight to watch for all comic book fans.Updated December 17 2021 by Tom Bowen: Despite being banned in China due to an apparent Tiananmen Square reference during the fantastic bus scene, Shang-Chi has proven to be yet another box office hit for Marvel and Disney. Less than four months on and a sequel has already been announced, with Destin Daniel Cretton once again set to write and direct. Whether the sequel will have quite as many Easter gggs for comic book readers as its predecessor remains to be seen though, with Shang-Chi featuring far more than its fair share.
10 The Golden Daggers
When Shang-Chi faces his father's men, he decides to find his sister and protect her. Upon reuniting with her, he learns Xialing now leads the so-called Golden Daggers club. That's not a randomly chosen name.
In the comics, the Golden Daggers is a sect that used the alias of Oriental Expeditors to front their criminal activity. Accidentally, the leader of the Oriental Expeditors was none other than Shang-Chi's half-sister. She's a very different character than Xialing but the connection is undeniable.
9 A Familiar Foe
While on the subject of the Golden Daggers club, there's a nice little Easter egg hidden in plain sight when viewers are first taken there near the beginning of the movie. As comic book fans should have instantly recognized, the fight before Shang-Chi's features not only Wong from Doctor Strange, but also an iconic Incredible Hulk villain as well.
Strictly speaking, Emil Blomsky's Abomination character has appeared in the MCU before, though those who've never read the comics would be forgiven for failing to recognize him. This is because his appearance in Shang Chi is a lot more in line with the way that he looks in the comic books than it was in The Incredible Hulk, with his gills and webbed ears now a lot more prominent.
8 Ta Lo
A significant portion of the film takes place in Ta Lo, the hidden village where Shang-Chi's mother comes from. Once again, the name of the village isn't random. In the comics, Ta Lo is a village that resides in a small pocket dimension and is the home of an alien race known as the Xian.
Even though the film Ta Lo is very different from its comic book counterpart, both villages are hidden from the rest of the world and not everybody can get there. Thor is one of the few superheroes who managed to visit Ta Lo in the comics.
7 Scaling Up
There's quite a lot of exposition taking place when Shang-Chi first arrives in Ta Lo, which can make it easy to miss certain details. One thing that's impossible to ignore, however, is the sapphire red armor set that's given to Shang-Chi by his aunt Ying Nan following a request from her now-dead sister Ying Li.
Created using the scales of the Great Protector, comic book readers will have no doubt recognized the visual similarities between it and the armor worn by the character in the comic book series. It's far from identical though, with the comic book iteration of Shang-Chi instead wearing a red gi with gold scales covering certain parts.
6 Many Names
After coming back to his childhood home, Shang-Chi's father Wenwu talks to his children and Katy. It's a somewhat frosty exchange, during which, the wielder of the ten rings reveals some of the many names that he's had over the centuries of his life.
He says he's been known as Warrior King, The Most Dangerous Man on Earth, and Master Khan. The last name, in particular, has a lot of significance in the comics, since it's one of the aliases that the Mandarin uses.
5 The Fearsome Enemy
Other than Mandarin, the film's greatest villain is the dragon-like Dweller. This powerful being has its comic book counterpart. In the comics, the Dweller is one of the so-called Fear Lords, and truthfully to his name, he can generate fear in others which, in return, brings him more power.
Even though Doctor Strange managed to defeat the Dweller in the comic books, just like Shang-Chi did in the film, the general belief is that it's impossible to kill him for good. With that in mind, there's every chance he'll be appearing in the MCU again at some point.
4 The Soul Eating Monsters
The Dweller isn't the only supernatural enemy Shang-Chi and his allies have to take on. The powerful being has its own army of soul-eaters. Just like the Dweller, the soul-eaters also come from the comics, and Doctor Strange fought them as well.
They come from the Sixth Dimension and Doctor Strange confronted them when they possessed a spirit of a young boy. He was able to defeat them and save the boy. Just like Shang-Chi and his friends defeat the soul-eaters in the movie and save everyone.
3 The Ten Rings
The ten rings are powerful artifacts in the film but even more so in the comics where each of them fulfills a specific function. At the beginning of the film, it says that no one knows where the rings came from but they could be from outer space.
Once again, this is something that's heavily inspired by the comics, since, in them, the rings come from an alien race named Axonn-Karr. Whether this is something that will be further explored in Shang-Chi 2 remains to be seen, though the fact that Wong is looking into the origin of the rings at the end of the first movie suggests that it may well be.
2 The Mystery Of His Father
Shang-Chi's father is a villain both in the film and in the comics. However, what those who've never read the comics might not know is that Shang-Chi's father isn't actually Mandarin. Instead, in the comics, Shang-Chi's father is the villainous Fu Manchu.
This character is also older than most people (by the time Shang-Chi is born, his father is about 200 years) and he fights his son. Other than that, he has nothing to do with the comic book Mandarin who has his own family. The movie, therefore, brings together two different comic book characters and melds them into just one man.
1 Comic Book Villains
It's easy not to realize that other, less major Shang-Chi villains also come from the comics. More specifically, Death Dealer and Razor Fist. Shang-Chi fights Razor Fist on the bus in San Francisco. In the comics, the character has appeared for the first time in 1975 in the Master of Kung Fu comics.
Death Dealer also first appeared in the comics in the Master of Kung Fu series but it was a bit later, in the 1980s. Just like in the film, Death Dealer worked against Shang-Chi and the two ended up clashing multiple times.