6) Pac-Man Attacks!
The 1980s references don’t end there, though. When Peter learns that his Celestial heritage means that he can create forms out of the energy of Ego’s planet, he says that he would use the ability to create “Pac-Man, Skeletor and Heather Locklear.”
Peter does indeed live up to his promise when, in the film’s climax, he defeats Ego by creating a giant Pac-Man to eat him – complete with the classic sound effects. Sadly, however, we don’t see the villain from He-Man or the Melrose Place actress turn up.
The movie also features a nod to a much less famous 1980s game. In the opening scene where the Guardians protect the Sovereign’s Anulax batteries from the Abelisk, Peter keeps an eye on its whereabouts with the aid of a Classic Football game from Mattel Electronics.
5) Stan Lee In Space
When Yondu, Rocket, Groot and Kraglin are zooming through space to try and reach Ego’s planet, we briefly cut away to an asteroid where an elderly astronaut is chatting away with some haughty-looking aliens. This astronaut is, of course, the one and only Stan Lee. This is the second time that Lee’s Marvel cameos have landed him in space, after he appeared on the planet Xandar, as a bit of a Casanova, in the first Guardians.
“And then there was this time I was a Federal Express agent…” we hear Lee say to the aliens (who we’ll identify in a minute). This is naturally a reference to Lee’s cameo in Captain America: Civil War, when he appeared as a short-sighted FedEx man who delivers a parcel to “Mr. Tony Stank.”
The implication of this scene is that Lee’s cameos all see him playing the same man, which Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige has since confirmed is indeed the case:
“Yes, we always thought it would be fun. Stan Lee clearly exists, you know, above and apart from the reality of all the films. So the notion that he could be sitting there on a cosmic pit stop during the jump gate sequence in Guardians was something very fun.”