She-Venom And Venom Dog
As was theorized before we saw the movie, Michelle Williams’ Anne Weying does become She-Venom, albeit briefly. The look of the character when she rescues Eddie from Treece and his goons in the forest is a close match to the comics. There’s a moment when Anne reacts with horror at chomping a guy’s head off, too, which feels like a PG-13 version of her reaction to becoming Venom on the page (the guilt led her to commit suicide).
Before it hops onto Anne, though, Venom finds a temporary host in a small dog at the hospital. There’s a long tradition of Venom dogs in the comics as well, though they’re usually of a larger and more fearsome breed than this little papillon pup. It’s a shame we don’t get to see it fully Venom out, apart from a momentary flash of its eyes, but the homage is welcome all the same.
Going back to Anne for a moment, and it’s revealed that the law firm she works for is called Michelinie and McFarlane, named after Venom’s two creators. Randy Schueller, meanwhile, the fan who first pitched a black-suited Spider-Man to Marvel is honored in the name of Eddie’s apartment building.
Venom’s Kind Of A Loser
In the movie’s third act, Venom encourages Eddie Brock to stop Riot from bringing the rest of the symbiotes back to Earth. Brock’s surprised by its selfless nature, and Venom reveals that he’s “kind of a loser, too” on his own homeworld and has come to like it here on Earth and with Eddie.
It’s unusual for Venom to be portrayed in such a sympathetic way, but the idea that it’s an outcast of the symbiote society does have precedent. In Planet of the Symbiotes, the other storyline that factored into Venom alongside Lethal Protector, it’s established that the symbiotes want to bleed their hosts dry while Venom craves constant symbiosis with another being. The other symbiotes consider it to be an aberration because of this belief and so, Venom’s imprisoned. Though it eventually finds what it’s been looking for when it encounters Spidey.
The idea that Venom considers itself different from the rest of its parasitic kind is also echoed in the movie’s running gag that the symbiote hates being called “a parasite.”