Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Season 5

Orientation: Part 1

1. When Phil Coulson admits that Fury's Toolbox contains no information about human outposts in space, Yo-Yo Rodriguez replies, "S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have a space division called S.P.E.A.R. or something?", which Coulson declined. This is a reference to S.W.O.R.D., a S.H.I.E.L.D. subdivision specialized in extraterrestrial threats in the comics. The TV rights of S.W.O.R.D. are under 20th Century Fox. However, since Disney bought out 20th Century Fox and Fox Television on December 14, 2017, there is a possibility that S.W.O.R.D. might make an appearance in future episodes.
2. Jeff Ward was originally cast as Virgil, a character who only appears in a few scenes, but made such an impression on cast and crew during the table-read that they decided to have him play the recurring character of Deke instead.
3. Yo-Yo makes reference to S.H.I.E.L.D. having people on the Moon. Inhumans (2017) took place on the Moon.
4. Virgil (Deniz Akdeniz) refers to himself as a 'true believer.' Stan Lee would address Marvel Comics fans as true believers.
5. Natalia Cordova-Buckley is now credited as a series regular.
6. Throughout the episode there are various musical 'stings' lifted from Alien (1979).
7. First lines of dialogue in this season's opener are "Haven't done one of these in a while . . . we're in the middle of the season." Season 5 opened on Dec. 1, 2017, well past the usual Sep opening of most TV shows (to accommodate the brief run of Inhumans (2017)).
8. This episode was nominated for a Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode.
9. The design Enoch decides on for his truck is Bendeery English Ale, a fictional beer brand introduced in season 2.
10. When Jemma Simmons tells Alphonso Mackenzie that "Magic is just science we don't understand yet", she states the third law of Clarke.
11. "Orientation" originally aired on ABC on December 1, 2017, and according to Nielsen Media Research, was watched by 4.27 million viewers within a week of its release.
12. The injury at the start of this episode to Agent May's leg and the resultant limp for the next few episodes was deliberately written in to cover a real life limp that Ming-Na Wen still had after knee surgery inbetween seasons.
13. Orientation p1. and p2. are the first episodes where actor Iain de Caestecker hasn't appeared. So, actress Elizabeth Henstridge is the only person to appear in every single episode of the show.
14. The drawing on Enoch's fridge (presumably drawn by Robin) is an image of Coulson and May in the season finale episode (The End).
15. Mack (Henry Simmons) says to Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) he was afraid she was going to lose her arms due to the Kree torture. This statement foreshadows events later in the season.
16. The season features the Kree, an alien race that previously appeared in the first three seasons, and in the film Guardians of the Galaxy.
17. The opening title doesn't appear until 10 minutes in, and it appears in space rather than the usual logo.

Orientation: Part 2

1. Orientation p1. and p2. are the first episodes where actor Iain de Caestecker hasn't appeared. So, actress Elizabeth Henstridge is the only person to appear in every single episode of the show.
2. Grill (Pruitt Taylor Vince) walks with a cane and pronounced limp. In his previous role as Otis in The Walking Dead season 1 (2011), Shane (Jon Bernthal) shot him in the knee to ensure he fell behind to be eaten by the walkers.
3. In Virgil's ledger, Coulson says a certain piece of Earth, 616, keeps showing up. In Marvel comics, Earth 616 is the prime Earth in the Multiverse.

A Life Spent

1. Mack comments that he does not want to die where no one can hear him scream. This is a reference to the tagline of the 1979 film Alien: "In space, no one can hear you scream."
2. Coulson mentions "objects in space". This was the name of an episode from one of Joss Whedon's other sci-fi shows; Firefly.
3. Pruitt Taylor Vince, Rya Kihlstedt and Eve Harlow were all in Heroes reborn. Kihlstedt and Harlow played mother and daughter.
4. The giant broken piece of earth that the signal is bouncing off of is called 616. This is a reference to Earth 616, which is the universe that the majority of Marvel Comics take place in.
5. In the Extra's Clip of Agents of Shield, the Courier has the finale and is trying to deliver it to the Mastermind. The Courier is involved in a high speed car chase and one of the individuals chasing them calls himself Marvel Security Ageny 616. 616 is the location the transmission from Earth is being bounced off of.

A Life Earned

1. When Grill solicits Mack to be his new enforcer, he echoes Coulson's similar plea from the season 2 episode "Who You Really Are", where Coulson says, "Have you seen yourself? You're a little bit of a beast all the time." Grill tells Mack, "Have you looked in a mirror? You're a beast!"

Rewind

1. Benderry Ale (the truck that figures prominently in Fitz's search for his team) is what Hunter and Bobbie are drinking at the end of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Parting Shot (2016)
2. The Cryo-Chamber that Enoch came to earth in, is actually a slightly modified and repainted Thule Force XL/XXL car luggage box.
3. The RV that Fitz & Hunter are in, is an early '80s Bounder, the same model RV that's used in the show 'Breaking Bad'. It even has the same colour scheme as the iconic 'Crystal Ship'.
4. The real names of the two ferrets used in the episode are Salt and Pepper.
5. Just before Fitz is frozen in the cryogenic container, Hunter says "I love you" to which Fitz replies "I know" which is a reference to Leia and Han Solo's scene just before Han is frozen in carbonite from The Empire Strikes Back.
6. When Fitz & Hunter are in the military warehouse where the cryo pod is stored, the Ark of the Covenant storage box from Raiders of the Lost Ark is visible on the top of a shelving unit.
7. When entering the military base, Hunter and Fitz give the false names of Peltzer and Futterman. These are surnames of characters from the movie Gremlins.
8. First episode of the whole series to feature only two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
9. When General McHale is looking through Robin's pictures, one of them shows the last scene from this season's finale of Coulson and May on a beach with the Zephyr flying overhead.

Fun & Games

1. This episode is directed by series star Clark Gregg
2. In the opening scene, Flint pulls a "Rizzoli & Isles" DVD Season 4 out of his backpack before putting it back in & exchanging it for a broken scissors.

Together or Not at All

1. Just before Fitz and Simmons go up using the anti gravity puck, they have a quick conversation. In that conversation Simmons says: allons-y. In Doctor Who it's one of the 10th doctors (played by David Tennant) favorite word to use According to the Doctor it's French for "Let's go"

The Last Day

1. The reason the two "young Robin" look so alike is they're played by real-life sisters.
2. Fitz explains a time loop is "like a record skipping". Coulson uses the exact same words trying to explain to Daisy what a time loop is while they are stuck in one in season 7 episode 9.

Best Laid Plans

1. The sign on the doors of the Kree Doctor's Laboratory spells "Empire or Death" in Kree Alphabet.
2. The episode title refers to Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse", which reads: "The best-laid schemes of mice and men, Often go awry."

Past Life

1. According to Natalia, In the scenes where there are two of Yoyo, Elizabeth Henstridge (Jemma) acted as her double to help her do her scenes.
2. When Yo Yo is talking to her revived self she should be speaking in her native Spanish.
3. Final appearances of Eve Harlow as Tess, Dominic Rains as Kasius, and Florence Faivre as Sinara.

All the Comforts of Home

1. General Rick Stoner in the comics was the first director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
2. When Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) arrives in the present he says, 'That was a hell of a thing.' This is what TSgt Chen (Tony Shalhoub) says in Galaxy Quest (1999) when he is transported to space.
3. The way the Chronicon describes their role and the rare situations in which they interfere is similar to that of the Observers in Fringe.
4. When the living Chronicom Noah shows the world news to the team, he mentions that an Asgardian has been seen in New York. This ties to Thor: Ragnarok, when Thor and Loki go to New York to find Odin, and are eventually caught by Doctor Strange after their arrival to the city.
5. When Deke returns from the future, his first words are 'Oh boy'. This is a tribute to Quantum Leap (1989 - 1993) who's protaginist Sam Beckett says this everytime he time travels and becomes a different person.

The Real Deal

1. 100th episode of the series.
2. The phrase Coulson uses "five by five". "Five by five" is a radio communications expression that means 'loud and clear'.
3. The title sequence of the episode is made from several other title sequences, including the one which was used from Season One, the ones used for the three pods Ghost Rider, LMD and Agents of HYDRA from Season Four and the Season Five opening sequences featuring Earth as pieces and a whole.
4. Full packed episode with a lot references to what happened in previous seasons and in the current season so far. The title is a mix of all seasons. All this is because of this the episode 100.
5. The space/time rift looks like the one on Amy Pond's bedroom wall in Dr. Who.
6. "The Real Deal" originally aired on ABC on March 9, 2018, and was watched by 3.78 million viewers within a week.
7. J. August Richards as Mike Peterson/Deathlok appears for the first time since episode 2.19 The Dirty Half Dozen.
8. When the monitors flicker out to static, Daisy says "They're here" which is a reference to the 1982 movie Poltergeist.
9. the episode includes the wedding of Leo Fitz (De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Henstridge), which the writers included as a moment that would satisfy long time fans of the series. The wedding was filmed on location in Placerita Canyon State Park.
10. This episode has two callbacks to Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There is the 5 x 5 comment but also when Mike, as a manifestation of Coulson's fear, tries to convince him that everything that's happened since his revival is an hallucination he's dreaming up. This is similar to the Buffy episode "Normal Again" where she is poisoned by a demon and starts to believe that she's in a mental hospital, dreaming up her entire life as a slayer. In both scenarios, Coulson and Buffy are told that this all being in their heads is the only explanation for the outlandish things that happen to them. Both are also very nearly convinced before rejecting this explanation at the last moment. Also, both episodes have a brief moment that leaves the audience wondering which is actually the truth. For Coulson, it's when Fitz says that Mike as Deathlok showing up is the exact thing they needed when they needed it. This tendency of things happening just as they need to was described by the other Mike as part of the convenience indicating that Coulson has to be hallucinating everything.
11. When Mike Peterson's recreation is talking to Phil Coulson, he uses several phrases that Coulson himself used when talking to the real Mike Peterson during the two's confrontation at the end of the first episode, Pilot: namely, "It matters who you are" and "The good ones, the real deal". Mike also tells Coulson that, above all, he wants "a chance to be a hero"; Pilot ends with Mike being incapacitated after telling Coulson "I could, you know? Be a hero."

Principia

1. When Deke is in the storage area checking out the Twinkies, the long shot shows a group of brown cardboard barrels which are water-stained and distressed. These are authentic Civil Defense barrels that were stored in government fallout shelters starting in the 1950s. The contents varied but could include food, water, medicine, and other things. The version that contained toilet paper also included large thick plastic bags and a black plastic seat.
2. When the agents confront Tony Caine as he is entering his car, the last alias Daisy mentions is "Marion Cobretti", which is the name of Sylvester Stallone's character in Cobra (1986).
3. In the final scene Ruby (Dove Cameron) wears a Stardust Nation t-shirt. 'Stardust Nation,' by Deborah Levy and illustrated by Andrzej Klimowski, is a graphic novel dealing with themes of personal identity and memory recall/repression, such as Werner Von Strucker (Spencer Treat Clark) is experiencing.
4. At 28:05- the floating ship looks to be a USS Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer. Also- the first United States Navy ship to be named after a living person.
5. Coulson tells Mack, "Mack Hammer "can't touch this" about the Gravitonium. From M.C. Hammer's song "Can't touch this."
6. The episode's title refers to Sir Isaac Newton's work "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" which is commonly known as just "Principia". Amongst the topics it covers are Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation; laws which are relevant when you have a regular US Naval destroyer ship floating at 25,000 feet in the air.
7. While on the floating boat, Coulson says "..its kinda cool walking around on a ship 25,000 ft up in the sky" In the comics, S.H.I.E.L.D actually had a Helicarrier which was a modified aircraft carrier that flew.

The Devil Complex

1. The title of the episode is a play on the term "God complex".
2. This is Peter Mensah's second Marvel Cinematic Universe role, the first being in The Incredible Hulk (2008).

Rise and Shine

1. The graduates of Hydra's Academy are expected to kill their pets at the end as a right of passage to defeat weakness. This is the same way John Garrett makes Grant Ward kill his dog in the woods before he's officially recruited.
2. There are multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe references in this episode: Whitehall mentions the American supersoldier program in WW2, he also mentions the Space Stone, by his time known as the Tesseract. The episode focuses also on the younger versions of Jasper Sitwell, (a future Hydra agent who would work undercover in Shield as seen in the first Agents of SHIELD season and in other MCU features like The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and Wolfgang Von Strucker (minor villain who has been mentioned several times in the series and appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron).
3. Hale tells Phil Coulson that she intends to show the alien invaders that Earth is a force to be reckoned with and he compares it to the "We will not go quietly into the night" speech from Independence Day.

Inside Voices

1. When Coulson is sitting on the floor talking to Creel, he mentions the "Evil League of Evil". This is a reference to Joss Whedon's Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog (2008), thus creating another tie-in to the Whedonverse.
2. Talbot: "Maybe next time, someplace warm, huh. White sandy beaches and the palm trees." Coulson: "That's not really my thing anymore." Coulson is referring to project Tahiti.
3. Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) berates himself for being in violation of 36-2903. This is the Air Force Instruction (AFI) that governs dress, appearance, and grooming for all Air Force personnel.
4. This episode was directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who starred in Eureka (2006-2012). Ming-Na Wen played a recurring character in seasons 4 and 5 of Eureka.
5. The flashback scene at the end of the episode was originally shot for Beginning of the End but was subsequently cut from that episode.

The Honeymoon

1. A skin-job is a biological or artificial life-form that is modeled to look and act like a human-being as demonstrated in Blade Runner (1982) or Battlestar Galactica (2004).
2. While preparing their parachutes, Jemma Simmons casually notices that Leo Fitz has no problem with the straps "this time", to which Fitz replies that they have come a long way. This is a reference to the sixth episode of the first season, FZZT, where Fitz attempts to rescue Simmons who jumped out of the Bus, but fails to strap his chute, forcing Grant Ward to go instead. It is the second time this event is referred to in Season Five.
3. When Mack tells Piper the door code, she clearly only presses 3 buttons when the code was 6 numbers

All Roads Lead...

1. When Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) sees one of Robin's drawings that is mostly red he says, 'redrum.' This is a reference to The Shining (1980), in which a boy with psychic powers says 'redrum' repeatedly, which is 'murder' spelled backwards.
2. When talking about potential relationships, Deke says that-in the future-when two people like each other they have the cultural ritual of one person giving a lemon to the other. In fan fiction, the hashtag lemons means that the story will include smutty/NSFW elements.
3. Final appearances of Spencer Treat Clark as Werner von Strucker and Dove Cameron as Ruby Hale.

Option Two

1. This episode aired the same day as Avengers: Infinity War (2018) premiered in theaters, and makes a slight reference to the events depicted in the movie. In fact, Candyman said "Have you seen all this weird stuff happening in New York?"
2. At 05:54- the gravitonium is in a pneumatic tube capsule; most everyone has used one at a bank drive-through.
3. After Glenn Talbot gains the power to control gravity, a case of gravitonium is seen with some of the letters obscured, causing it to read "GRAVITON", suggesting that Talbot has become the villain Graviton.

The One Who Will Save Us All

1. During the Zephyr's launch, Mack and May mention MECO and the Karman line. MECO stands for Main Engine Cut-Off, when a ship has inertia enough to take it out of Earth's gravity. The Karman line is the accepted altitude at which Earth's atmosphere meets outer space.
2. The show, specifically this episode, reunites actor Peter Mensah, co-creators Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen, and writer Brent Fletcher after their previous works on Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011).
3. This episode might take place during the events of Avengers: Infinity War, due to the fact that Taryan tells Talbot about Thanos' forces beginning an assault on Earth in a brief conversation.
4. Final appearance of Catherine Dent as General Hale.

The Force of Gravity

1. The original episode title (F = G (m1 x m2) / d2) was the formula for Isaac Newton's equation for gravity. Before the air date, the episode was renamed to 'The Force of Gravity'.
2. Jiaying's body is only a skeleton, despite the passage of only three years since her death. Even assuming she wasn't embalmed, a coprse interred in a coffin would take a decade or longer for the soft tissues to decompose.
3. The way in which Daisy Johnson says "They're here" when the Remorath enter Zephyr One is a reference to a famous line spoken by the character Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke) in the 1982 horror film Poltergeist.
4. Deke mentions being the same age as his grandparents, Fitz and Simmons. Jeff Ward (Deke) is actually a year minus a day older than Iain De Caestecker (Fitz), and nine months older than Elizabeth Henstridge (Simmons).
5. When Talbot explains his new powers to his son, he says "I can even fly!" Adrian Pasdar portrayed the character Nathan Petrelli in the TV series Heroes, who also had the ability to fly.
6. The television newscast Talbot's family is watching mentions events from Avengers: Infinity War.
7. Final appearance of Brian Patrick Wade as Carl Creel.

The End

1. This episode was written as a potential series finale, but it was eventually renewed for a 6th season.
2. The plaque for Coulson mentions that he "gave us his life (a couple of times)." This is similar to the tombstone for Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which read that "she saved the world (a lot)". The Buffy show was also a Joss Whedon creation, and she also died in the season 5 finale when the future of the show was uncertain, but ultimately got a sixth season, just like Agents of Shield.
3. Coulson's toast at his going-away party, "Here's to us. Who's like us? Damn few," is a repeated lyric refrain in the song "Old Friends" from the 1981 stage musical "Merrily We Roll Along". It's also a shortened version of a Marine saying. "Here's to us; who's like us?; damn few; and they're all dead!
4. This marks the final appearance of Adrian Pasdar as Glenn Talbot aka Graviton.