So I decided to watch Us again to see what I could pick up that I didn’t catch in my
first video, 63 Things You Missed In Us.
If you haven’t seen that video, you’ll want to watch that first, just click or tap
up here.
I also received a ton of great comments on that video, so if you want see some things
I missed that viewers like you picked up on, then stick around to the end of this video.
So in the previous video I talked about the tapes next to the TV at the beginning of the
movie that may have served as influences for Jordan Peele when making Us, such as The Goonies,
C.H.U.D and The Right Stuff.
This time I noticed a couple more: A Nightmare on Elm Street, perhaps for Freddy’s burned
face and iconic glove, and a tape with a custom label reading either Tuesday Nites or Thursday
Nites, the text was pretty small, and I’m not sure exactly what we’re supposed to
get from that.
There was another movie I still wasn’t able to make out on the shelf, The Man With 2 Brains,
about a man who has a tethered bond with a female brain.
Thank you Kelly for sharing that one.
There are a couple things at the carnival game where Addie’s dad wins the thriller
T-Shirt.
She says she wants him to go for prize number 11, which fits in with the repeated references
to 11, a number that stands for duality and mirrorism.
One of the other available prizes is a Black Flag shirt.
I forgot to mention this in the previous video, when I talked about all the similarities to
Addie’s abduction in 1986 and the coming of the doppelgangers in the present, but there
are two other Black Flag shirts before each of those events: the carny at the Whack-a-Mole
game wears one, and one of Josh’s twin daughters wears one at the beach.
But Rob in the comments took it a step further.
“The four bars of the Black Flag logo mirror the 11:11 theme.”
Oh my gosh, he’s right!
That’s genius!
Look at this!
Look at it!
But that’s not even the end of it, because Kamili reminds us that “Black Flag has a
song called Rise Above, just like the tethered rise above to kill their doppelgangers!”
It’s like this band was put here all those years ago just to be in this movie, it’s
too perfect.
Another thing I noticed that occurs in both events: the 1986 and the present is that we
see people eating fast food from Popperpots Cove -- with the parrot mascot.
In 1986 it’s a couple at the boardwalk, and in the present, the family eats it at
the beach house.
Addie’s double is eating a strawberry in that scene, and the son Jason doesn’t feel
like eating, so it’s two people eating from the restaurant in both scenarios.
I discussed the real Addie whistling The Itsy Bitsy Spider when her and the other doppelgangers
dressed in red show up to the house, and I’ve also noticed Addie whistles the same tune
when she first goes into the mirror maze.
And when we first see the underground, it’s a long pull out shot of rabbits in cages.
When we return later, they are running all over the hall and the cages are empty, signifying
that those below have been set loose.
When we’re first introduced to the family, we see a sticker on the back window of the
car with four stick figures that represent them.
They’re all holding hands in a similar fashion to the Hands Across America protests.
There’s also a picture in Jason’s room near the Merlin picture that I mentioned in
the other video, that depicts children holding hands in the same pose.
Also, he has this lamp that looks like a jack-in-the-box, which is a toy where something springs up
from below, a representation of the doppelgangers coming up from below.
At the beach, Josh’s wife, Kitty brings up the fact that she got plastic surgery,
but Adelaide's doppelganger tells her, “you look the same as you did last year, another
example of duality.
Kitty’s double, after taking over their vacation house, sits in front of a mirror
and cuts that same spot on her face with the scissors, I’m guessing they don’t have
a plastic surgeon in the underground tunnels so she’s making due with what she has.
Just before the doppelganger family shows up at the house, fake-Addie tells Gabe that
she doesn’t feel like herself, to which he says, “I think you look like yourself,”
a little clue about her not being the real Addie.
Then, he makes a joke about how he thinks he’d be able to beat up someone with the
same physique as her.
She doesn’t take it well, and he apologizes, claiming he was just trying to “lighten
the mood.”
Right as he says the word, “lighten”, the power goes out, which could be another
example of the strange coincidences that lead up to the uprising, just like the disc landing
perfectly on the beach towel.
“Mush” was kind enough to point out more about that moment with the disk.
“The frisbee landed precisely on one of the blue circles on the beach towel.
The towel was white, it had blue circles on it and the frisbee was red with a star on it.
US.
Us.”
That’s a great point Mush, and you know what else Mush?
It fits in with several clues about the doubles being something that only happens in America.
The opening text only mentions tunnels that run under America, when asked who they are,
Addie replies with “we are Americans”, and the news broadcast seems to imply this
is a national crisis, making no mention of other countries.
Also, the fake-Addie who once lived down in the tunnels suggests that they go to Mexico
to escape, and she even has a book about Mexico on the shelf in their vacation home.
The scene at the house with the family vs their tethers has a few things I found interesting.
For example, the family is almost never on camera together with the doppelgangers.
This is probably just to save some money on visual effects and make it easier to shoot
the movie, but it does fit in with the idea that only one of them can exist on the surface.
Pluto, the copy of Jason, is the one to start a fire in the fireplace, he also dies in the
fire at the end.
TellanLee said something I really like, that the red suit family sits in front of the fireplace,
therefore casting a shadow over the normal family, symbolically switching the roles.
I also noticed the table they sit across from each other at is a mirror -- so they’re
seeing themselves in the mirror.
There’s another reversal of roles when the daughter Zora is chased by her tether, and
the tether jumps on top of a car and looks down at her.
Here are a few clues I found about Addie being switched with Red.
When they’re trying to devise a plan she says, “they think like us.
They know where we are.”
How could she know that without having been one herself?
When the two doppelgangers of her kids die, she can be seen looking remorseful, even trying
to stop Jason’s doppelganger from backing into the fire.
Some people were theorizing that this is because Jason was switched at some point with a doppelganger,
like possibly the previous summer when Jason got locked in the closet, or possibly when
he goes to the bathroom at the beach.
I don’t see how that would be possible.
Even if the burn marks did come after the supposed switch was made, I don’t see why
Jason would forget about his original family and inexplicably start acting like a dog,
when nothing of that sort happened to Addie when she was forced to go underground as child.
If that was the case, he probably would have wanted to go with his original mother.
So I have to stick with my original theory that Jason has the ability to control Pluto,
because his Mom is a doppelganger, so he’s part doppelganger himself.
There were two other clues you may have missed about the Addie that we follow as an adult
being the fake, and the one underground being the real Adelaide.
When Gabe’s wife goes back into the house to get the deceased Josh’s car keys, she
kills the last remaining of the two tether twins.
When doing so she makes grunting noises similar to that of the other doppelgangers.
Also, back in the 80s when we see the flashback of her parents taking her to the doctor, she’s
playing with these toy animals, some of the same animals seen on the wall of the mirror
maze that she lived under.
At the end of the movie in that last shot, the number 1111 can be seen on top of the
ambulance that they ride away in.
Now let's look at the rest of the comments left on my previous video.
“Another Easter Egg.
Nobody is talking about the son eating dry Fruit Loops while they were sitting at the
round table at their friends’ house after killing the doppelgangers.
Little homage to Get Out I think.”
Get Out, of course, being director Jordan Peele’s previous film, where this lady eats
some Fruit Loops.
This next comment is one of my favorites.
One of the things I mentioned in the other video was we hear the announcer of the baseball
game say the score is tied 11-11.
Ryan Smith adds that “the announcers mention Minnesota, who’s pro team is called the
Twins.”
OK -- how about the Twins ‘rose up’ from being the worst team in baseball in 2016 to
make the playoffs the following year, just as the doppelgangers ‘rose up’ from….
OK I’m kidding.
It’s true though, they did improve by 26 wins in 2017.
“Adelaide is also wearing a white shirt that continuously gets more and more red with
blood, indicating her true character being revealed as the movie progresses.”
Also not a thing you missed, but this was an interesting comment.
“Remember the Simpsons episode where Bart has an evil twin named Hugo?
Hugo is raised in the dark and fed on raw fish… at the end they realise Hugo was the
real Bart.”
I do remember that episode.
I think what they realized at the end was that the Bart we know is actually the evil
twin, and I believe that was a Treehouse of Horror segment.
I’ve actually been thinking about doing a Treehouse of Horror Things You Missed episode
one of these days, so let me know if that's something you’d like to see.
“I think the creepy voice of Red actually came from her voice box being crushed when
she was attacked as a child.”
He or she is talking about Addie being strangled by the doppelganger in the hall of mirrors.
I saw several comments bring this up and I guess it could be possible, but I don’t
think that’s the case based on my own… uh… kinky experiences.
But, she was strangled by a child, so probably not strong enough to do any damage.
I think it has more to do with the fact that the doppelgangers only communicate through
grunting so she didn’t really get much experience with speech, and maybe added to by the fact
that she hadn’t breathed the air on the surface for over 30 years.
Charles Ugas adds, “I took the Jaws shirt as a hint that the terror comes from below.”
Yes!
Love it!
Next.
Things.
“The little girl is wearing a greenish / turquoise jumper that says “tho”, which means “rabbit”
in Vietnamese.”
It checks out.
Translating all my videos to Vietnamese is finally paying off.
Thanks David.
“There’s also the duality in the Michael Jackson references… the Thriller shirt represents
normal vs zombie Michael, the red Thriller outfit vs the tethered’s red jumpsuits and
Michael’s single rhinestone glove vs the tethered’s plain leather glove.”
Thank you!
The one thing I was not really getting the point of was the gloves in Us.
Shy Franklinstein also added that she thinks “the werewolf mask is reference to MJs Thriller
and that video’s surprise ending.”
Could be something there.
“Some mistakes were make.”
Uh, oh.
Brace for criticism.
“The exit signs were red.”
Yeah I don’t know why I said they were green.
I guess just because they sometimes are green and I remembered it wrong, but red fits the
color scheme of the movie obviously a lot better.
“The mask was Chewbacca.”
I saw quite a few comments saying that, and if this is supposed to be Chewy, that’s
a really, really bad mask.
I’m gonna stick with Wolfman on that one -- which also goes nicely with the Thriller
reference, since that video contains a werewolf movie.
“The parents weren’t doing Rock, Paper, Scissors, a random couple were.”
Yeah, absolutely right.
I guess I just remembered it wrong when I got out of the theater the first time.
Also, someone else posted: “The tethered version of the couple playing rock paper scissors
were only shooting scissors at the end.”
The next one talks about the Alexa-like virtual assistant in Josh’s house.
“I feel like naming the “Alexa” gadget “Ophelia” was clever.
Ophelia was driven mad by the dualities in her life, such as whether or not Hamlet loves
her or is only using her, and whether she is pure, as her family sees her, or an object,
as Hamlet sees her.
She also ends up killing herself, and you can’t get much more heavy-handed than that.”
This is a great point, I knew there had to have been some reason to give the virtual
assistant a Shakespearean name, but I wasn’t making the connection until I read your comment,
thank you Robin.
“9:11 who else saw the big chungus, laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying-emoji, laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying-emoji, laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying-emoji.”
This is more a Thing You (might have) Missed in my episode of Things You Missed.
When I was talking about the rabbits, I snuck in a picture of Big Chungus, at 9 minutes
and eleven seconds.
Not only does this contain the number 11, but 9/11 is the date of the attacks on the
Twin Towers in New York City, another twin reference.
The towers themselves form the number 11, and it was a coordinated attack on America,
just as the doppelgangers make a coordinated attack on America in the movie.
When the Twin Towers were built, they were the tallest buildings in the world, just as
Big Chungus, is the biggest rabbit the world has even known, and if you don’t believe
me, then I don’t think you can fathom just how big Big Chungus actually is…
Joker Laugh also points out that they mention the Twin Towers in the Hands Across America
ad at the beginning.
CaapriceTube has some great comments about the meaning behind character names.
Adelaide’s name, is like the Australian city, and Australia is known as “the land
down under”.
Zora means “dawn” in slavic languages, symbolizing the transition from night to day.
Someone also added her doppelganger is called Umbrae, which means shadow.
Should have known that considering Umbreon is the dark type Eevee.
Speaking of Nintendo games, there’s one more that I wanted to highlight and it’s
actually something I joked about wayyy back in December when I covered first trailer for
Us.
Let’s roll that clip.
“And when they’re initially walking to the beach, their long shadows represent a
dark version of themselves.
Since they have a dark version of themselves, they may also be the next hit Nintendo franchise.
In fact if you pause at 1 minutes and 53 seconds into the trailer, you can clearly see Mario
is standing there holding hands with one of the doppelgangers.
This one’s called Scissors Mario.”
While I was partially joking at the time, after seeing the movie I wouldn’t be surprised
if the inclusion of a character with a dark doppelganger was intentional.
Yuri Koller adds an excellent point, “Super Mario is a character that goes into tubes
underground.”
I love that idea.
Thanks to everyone who left a comment -- apologies if I couldn’t include yours, if I included
all of them, the video would be like four days long.
Click the playlist on the left if you want to see some Things You Missed in the trailers
for Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and remember to subscribe to CZsWorld for new
horrors every week, ring that deathbell for notifications and I’ll see you in the next
one.
Assuming we both survive.