Float on down.
We're going deep into the sewers to dig up all the Easter eggs and references you might've
missed in It: Chapter Two.
Now is your last chance to turn back, because there are plenty of spoilers and scares ahead.
Stephen King's stories are often connected through their New England locations as well
as their monsters.
It takes place in Derry, Maine, and the book often references the nearby town of Castle
Rock, where multiple works by King are set, including his novella "The Body" and its movie
adaptation, Stand By Me.
These two stories are also connected through their focus on friendship, childhood trauma,
and the end of innocence as groups of kids are forced to confront dark forces around
them, both supernatural and human.
At the end of Stand By Me, Gordie LaChance is finishing the last lines of his memoir,
inspired by the news of his childhood best friend's death.
His office has dark wood paneling and a wall of books around him, as well as a picture
window looking out onto the front yard.
In It: Chapter Two, Bill's office is a replica of Gordie's, albeit with a sleek laptop rather
than a clunky 1980s home computer.
And like in Stand By Me, Bill is working on his own book about childhood.
1986's Stand By Me was the film that gave Stephen King a reputation for more than his
horror stories.
It also helped catapult young actors River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and Jerry
O'Connell to stardom in film and television.
Phoenix's promising career was sadly cut short in its prime when he died of an overdose in
1993.
In It: Chapter Two, the film adaptation of Bill's horror novel is being helmed by Peter
Bogdanovich, who directed River Phoenix in one of his final movies, The Thing Called
Love.
As it turns out, cinema legend Bogdanovich is actually a friend of It director Andy Muschietti
and asked for the cameo personally.
The connection to Stand By Me and River Phoenix is the poetry of coincidence, but still brings
a melancholy touch to It: Chapter Two for fans who remember him fondly.
In Stephen King's epic gunslinger fantasy series The Dark Tower, roses have a special
significance.
Their appearance often indicates a nearby portal to parallel universes, and certain
roses are powerful enough to enchant and heal with their mystical properties.
One in particular, known simply as The Rose, is found in an abandoned lot in New York City
at the corner of Second and Forty-Sixth street.
Rose symbolism appears frequently in King's works, including It.
In It: Chapter Two, Bill finds his old bike Silver at the vintage shop Secondhand Rose,
which is a sly reference to things that were once beautiful and important but are now merely
taking up shelf space in a small-town store.
In the book, the store has the full name Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes, and Bill buys his
Schwinn for $20.
In Chapter Two the proprietor, played by Stephen King himself, charges Bill $300.
When the older Losers go back to the house on Neibolt Street in Chapter Two, a 1950s-era
Amana fridge that was first seen in Chapter One makes another appearance.
Inside the fridge they find Stanley's decapitated head, along with a host of other nastiness.
In the novel It, that fridge played heavily in a number of disturbing scenes that have
never made it to the screen due to their graphic nature.
Most notably, the fridge in the junkyard is where Pennywise victim and school bully Patrick
Hockstetter would trap animals and wait for them to suffocate to death.
It's also the site where Patrick met his untimely end in a swarm of flying leeches.
"Mother f------------"
In It: Chapter Two, the civic pride expressed by the phrase "I Heart Derry" takes a sinister
turn.
In Chapter One, the message can be seen printed on one of Pennywise's red balloons, a reference
to a horrific hate crime in the book that hadn't been put to screen until Chapter Two.
After winning an "I Heart Derry" cap at the Canal Days carnival, Adrian Mellon and his
boyfriend begin walking home, talking about their future.
On the way, they are set upon by a group of homophobic bullies who viciously beat the
couple, throwing Adrian's body over the bridge and into the speeding current below, where
Pennywise proceeds to eat him.
King based Adrian Mellon's storyline on a real-life hate crime that played out exactly
as he wrote it.
Minus the cannibal clown, at least.
It: Chapter Two is the first adaptation to put these horrifying events on screen, putting
the previous "I Heart Derry" reference into its proper context.
In every It adaptation, and as per the book, the local cinema plays a huge part in the
Losers' story.
During the summer it's a safe space for kids to escape from Henry Bowers and his gang of
bullies.
It's also the place where many of Pennywise's tormenting monsters take shape for the Losers,
like Ritchie's Wolf Man.
But in It: Chapter Two, the movie theater is boarded up and closed down, with only movie
posters to indicate when the shuttering happened.
We get a closer look when Richie visits the place during his search for a token, and one
of the posters is 1998's Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan rom-com You've Got Mail, which implies
that the theater closed its doors sometime before the turn of the century.
But more ominously, there are two rips in the poster that spell out a scraggly "IT."
Turns out, that's a sneaky bit of foreshadowing, since Richie is about to have his own run-in
with Pennywise.
"Beep beep, Richie"
In the novel, the Bradley Gang were a group of gangsters who made Derry a pit-stop during
Prohibition.
One day, in a strange series of events that points to Pennywise's evil machinations, the
Bradley Gang were massacred by townsfolk in one fell swoop.
The event went down as historic legend, and both It: Chapter One and Chapter Two feature
a mural in Derry commemorating the gruesome event.
What Chapter Two adds to the story is that Ben actually found the Bradley Gang's bunker
and reinforced it so the Losers could use it as a hideout from Henry Bowers and the
other bullies.
This is why Ben finds a bunch of rusted old padlocks and chains down there.
The Bradley Gang had already made this a secure hiding spot, and the hole was waiting in the
woods for the Losers to find and adopt it as their own.
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