While his backpack alludes to the idea of cultural and emotional baggage, the flora emerging from within is a pastiche of the paintings of Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian missionary who became a court painter in China during the Qing dynasty and revolutionized traditional silk scroll painting by combining Western rendering techniques with traditional Chinese aesthetics.
The cowlick on [Jin’s] head is from my own experience growing up in New Jersey where my Italian barber was incapable of cutting Asian hair, resulting in the shorter hairs shooting straight up. On Jin’s phone, Mjölnir flies into Freddy Wong’s head, further emphasizing the clashing of cultures.