Intertextual humor

In The Amazing Spider-Man there is this moment. Spider-Man Peter warns the city mayor that the city is threatened by a predatory lizard (the villain in the movie is half human and half lizard).

The mayor looks at Peter incredulously, and says, "Who do you think I am? The mayor of Tokyo?"

A moment of intertextual humor; the joke is lost on those who aren't familiar with the Japanese monster movie mania. 

However there is more: I am familiar with Japanese monster movies, but I wouldn't be aware of the humor if I didn't catch a glimpse of the same in a scene from Persepolis.

In Persepolis, young Marjane and her grandmother go to a movie theater in Tehran to see Godzilla. Tehran at this time is being bombed by Iraqi warplanes. There is mayhem on screen and real mayhem off screen, outside.

When they walk out of the movie, the grandmother, unimpressed by the celluloid mayhem tells her granddaughter about the "Japanese" and their "crazy" love for mindless monstrosities."

That's when I caught on to the joke--a joke at the expense of a part of Japanese cultural preferences.