DreamWorks Animation’s features are typically crammed with references to pop culture and history, but there’s a truly surprising one towards the end of the otherwise innocuous “Megamind,” opening Friday.

A rogue superhero named Tighten, voiced by Jonah Hill, is laying waste to Metro City, which largely resembles New York. At one point, he begins to topple a skyscraper from below, and the clouds of rubble look to me and the fleeing pedestrians look to me like a fairly unmistakable reference to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

A colleague sitting next to me at Saturday morning’s screening agreed that seemed to be the filmmakers’ intent, however fleeting and dubious. Imagine someone trying to slip a reference to the Pearl Harbor attack into a 1950 Disney animated feature.