There's plenty of callbacks to The Shining in Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep.
There are also references to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, cameos from familiar faces,
and plenty more things to discover.
No need to ask Tony for help; here are all the Easter eggs you missed in Doctor Sleep.
Much like Dan Torrance is haunted by what he saw as a child in the Overlook Hotel, so
too is Doctor Sleep haunted by the visuals of The Shining.
For starters, the film pulls direct footage from the 1980 horror masterpiece throughout
the runtime as Dan remembers his experiences as a child.
Slightly less obvious are the visual homages, which include a nigh-identical tracking shot
as Dan and Abra drive up to the Overlook Hotel just like his father did 40 years ago.
Dan follows in his father's footsteps in other ways, too - while meeting with Dr. John after
landing in Frazier, New Hampshire, Dan is offered a job.
In the scene, Dr. John's office looks nearly identical to the office of the manager in
The Shining, which saw Jack Torrance get the job as the caretaker for the Overlook.
One final reference is Abra's home address: 1-9-8-0, or 1980, the year that The Shining
was originally released.
Although Jack and Wendy don't make much more than cameos in Doctor Sleep, their presence
haunts Dan.
We find out that his resolution to not use his Shining comes from trauma he experienced
at seeing his mother's death approach, while his alcoholism is an unwelcome present from
his father.
His parents haunt the film visually, as well.
While trying to keep Abra away from Rose the Hat once the pair return to the Overlook for
the final battle, Dan is injured by Rose and possessed by the spirits of the hotel.
When he meets Abra again, he's limping and carrying an axe the same way his father chased
him through the hotel years ago.
When he tries to keep Rose the Hat from approaching him on the steps, it's a mirror performance
of the way Wendy Torrance keeps Jack away with wild swings of a baseball bat in Kubrick's
film.
While Doctor Sleep is definitely a sequel to Kubrick's version of The Shining, it's
also a sequel to King's original story.
"What about room 237?"
"Room 237?"
In the book, the forbidden room in the Overlook is 217, rather than 237.
Kubrick changed the numbers at the hotel owners' request.
The owners feared that if the director used an actual room number at the Timberline Hotel,
where The Shining was filmed, no one would want to book the room.
Doctor Sleep uses the more well-known 237 number, but nods to the original book by having
Dan step through room 217 at the hospice where he works.
Some other major references to the original novel come when Dan and Abra return to the
Overlook; while there, Dan runs into Lloyd the bartender, who may or may not be the ghost
of Jack Torrance.
Jack/Lloyd offers Dan a drink of whiskey and tells him to "take your medicine," a famous
line from the book that didn't survive in Kubrick's screenplay.
In addition, when the ghosts take over Dan's body, Abra calls him a "false face," just
as Danny called his own father in the climax of the novel version of The Shining.
Some bits of continuity between the novel and the film version of The Shining were too
tough to simply adjust outright.
For starters, the Overlook Hotel doesn't even really exist in the Doctor Sleep novel; instead,
Dan and Abra wander through the wreckage as they battle against Rose the Hat and her cronies.
That's because the Overlook is destroyed at the end of The Shining novel as Jack realizes
what he's done and battles against his possession.
Once again, Flanagan nods at that narrative by having Dan basically do the same thing,
starting the boiler in order to destroy the Overlook.
One detail from the Doctor Sleep novel that didn't make it into the film actually has
nothing to do with Stanley Kubrick at all; instead, it was clearly just too complicated
to work within a 150-minute runtime.
In the film, Abra calls Dan "uncle," first as a cover story for why he's being visited
at work by a teenage girl, and later in the film as a sign of affection.
In the novel, he actually is her uncle, since Abra's mother is his half-sister by way of
their father.
Dan also learns all this from Abra's grandmother who's dying of cancer, which all seems a bit
too complicated for an already-packed film.
Meanwhile, some things are just left deliberately ambiguous about whether they occured in Doctor
Sleep's universe.
For starters, Dick Hallorann appears in the film, first to offer young Danny a trick to
keep the ghosts trapped in his mind, and then later to push Dan to help Abra.
Dick never mentions how he died, or even if he really died at all - considering the psychic
powers on display in Doctor Sleep, he could just be paying Danny a visit via Shining.
That ambiguity is a reference to the fact that Hallorann's fate is pretty different
between the novel and the film version of The Shining.
In the novel, Hallorann unquestionably survives, helping Danny and Wendy to mourn in Maine
after the trio escape the Overlook.
In the film, he's killed by an axe-wielding Jack just as he arrives to help Danny at the
Overlook.
That specific axe shows up in Doctor Sleep when Dan uses it to attack Rose, but there's
never any mention of it as the specific weapon that killed Hallorann.
Whether he's a ghost or not, his presence does provide some Easter eggs.
For one, when he meets Danny to talk about ghosts in 1980, he sits in the same position
that Dan will later sit while discussing the power with Abra in 2018.
Since Dan ends the film as a ghostly visitor to Abra in the same way that Dick first appears,
it seems he takes after his old mentor in more ways than one.
If you've seen any of Mike Flanagan's other horror works, you'll probably recognize a
familiar face or two in Doctor Sleep.
The writer-director loves to pack his film and television projects with actors that he's
worked with before.
Several members of the True Knot also appeared in The Haunting of Hill House TV series, like
Catherine Parker, Robert Longstreet, and Selena Anduze.
Meanwhile, Bruce Greenwood and Carel Struycken, who played Dr. John and Grandpa Flick in Doctor
Sleep, respectively, both appeared in Flanagan's previous Stephen King adaptation, Gerald's
Game.
They're not the only familiar faces on display in Doctor Sleep, although you'd be forgiven
if you missed this little cameo.
The original Danny Torrance, Danny Lloyd, appears as an onlooker during a Little League
game midway through the film.
His appearance is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo, but at least you won't need to ask
Tony if you missed something while watching Doctor Sleep.
Doctor Sleep isn't Mike Flanagan's first adaptation of a Stephen King novel; first came 2017's
Gerald's Game.
The story follows a woman named Jesse who, after some bedroom play gone wrong with her
husband Gerald, finds herself handcuffed to the bed with no one around for help.
In the novel and the film, Jesse eventually escapes from her handcuffs by slicing the
skin off her right hand in order to slide out of her bonds.
Flanagan certainly didn't forget his prior King adaptation while directing Doctor Sleep,
since there's a small reference to Jesse's ingenuity.
In the film, Rose the Hat falls into a trap while trying to invade Abra's mind.
The file cabinet of Abra's memories slam shut on Rose's hand as Abra toys with her.
Like Jesse, Abra rips the skin off her right hand in order to escape, although the success
leaves both women with a gnarly-looking wound.
Stephen King is considered by many to be the master of horror, but he's also a master at
franchising.
Nearly all of his books, and plenty of his short stories, all take place within the Dark
Tower universe, which encompasses everything from It and Doctor Sleep to the actual Dark
Tower novels.
"Inside this circle is your world, my world, many others.
Not that many."
Unsurprisingly, the film version of Doctor Sleep is packed to the brim with references
to the series.
When Dick visits Dan at the hospice, he tells him "Ka is a wheel," a quote straight from
the Dark Tower novels.
Less obvious are references to two competing forces in the Dark Tower universe: the Tet
corporation and LaMerk Industries.
Tet shows up in Doctor Sleep as Tet Transit, the bus system that brings Dan to Frazier
and, later in the film, Abra to Dan.
In the Dark Tower, the Tet Corporation is largely benevolent, so it makes sense that
it would appear in the film to take Dan and Abra to where they can do the most good.
Meanwhile, LaMerk Industries owns the park where the True Knot torture and kill a young
baseball player.
In the books, LaMerk is allied with the Crimson King, who's one of the worst evils in King's
universe, so of course they'd own the perfect lot in which to bury a body.
Finally, the baseball player that the True Knot kills wears the jersey number 19, which
is an integral number in the world of the Dark Tower series.
While saying his goodbyes to Abra, Dan tells her to "shine on" because the world needs,
quote, "people who stand."
Dan's not wrong: the world in King's universe really does need people who stand, considering
that there's a massive novel called The Stand that involves a divine battle between good
and evil.
The Stand has been adapted before: first as a 1994 television miniseries, although it
hasn't reached the pantheon of some of King's better-known adaptations.
Dan's cryptic words might be a reference to the new The Stand TV miniseries which will
premiere on CBS All Access, which is co-owned by Warner Bros.
It may turn out that the only thing needed to defeat Randall Flagg and the Captain Trips
virus was corporate synergy.
It's not all Stephen King Easter eggs in Doctor Sleep.
Mike Flanagan actually took the time to acknowledge another modern-day horror maestro: director
Ti West.
Like Flanagan, West started directing in the 2000s, achieving similar mainstream acclaim
for his work on films like The Innkeepers, The Sacrament, and The House of the Devil.
That last film starred Jocelin Donahue as an unlucky babysitter in the 1980s who signs
up for a last-minute babysitting job that goes very wrong, very quickly.
Donahue also appears in Doctor Sleep as Abra's mother, so it makes sense that Flanagan would
make a small reference to her House of the Devil role.
While Danny and Dick are chatting on the bench in a flashback to 1980, a bulletin board can
be seen that's covered in flyers.
Buried near the bottom and partially obscured is a flyer advertising for a babysitting job.
Granted, the flyer itself doesn't bear much of a visual reference to the absurdly stark
advertisement that was seen in House of the Devil, but the timeline and Donahue's casting
in Doctor Sleep means that its inclusion probably wasn't a coincidence.
It's no stretch to say that Doctor Sleep is intensely concerned with dreams and nightmares.
The title literally references sleep, and both Dan and Abra experience gruesome and
upsetting nightmares.
The big problem for those two is that their nightmares tend to result in real-life consequences,
which might seem familiar to anyone who's seen the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Wes Craven's famous horror franchise likewise envisioned a monster that could invade your
dreams and affect your real-life body.
"It's just a nightmare!"
"That's enough."
Flanagan paid homage to Craven's classic creation with an Elm Street sign that's clearly visible
off of the main street in Frazier, the town where Dan spends most of Doctor Sleep.
Considering that Dan also spends a good chunk of Doctor Sleep having trouble sleeping, we
think it's safe to say that there were definitely nightmares on Elm Street in Doctor Sleep.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite movies are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.