Cobra Kai is moving to Netflix for its third season, continuing to settle the score between
Karate Kid rivals Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso. Let's head into the dojo and meditate
on the most clever and easy to miss references and Easter eggs hiding in the series' first
two seasons.
The Karate Kid is a classic movie of the 1980s. Beyond the main story of a spirited underdog
overcoming the odds to vanquish his better prepared opponent, there's also a strong through-line
of class warfare.
As in other classics from the era like Pretty in Pink or Some Kind of Wonderful, the rich
kids are needlessly and endlessly cruel to the kids from families with less money. True
to form, Johnny comes from money and lives in a nice area, and he's harsh to and dismissive
of Daniel right away because this new kid in town and son of a single mother lives in
a small, inexpensive apartment in the less exclusive California town of Reseda.
When Cobra Kai picks up the story more than 30 years on, the situation has reversed. Daniel
owns a chain of car dealerships and has a lot of money in the bank. Johnny, on the other
hand, is divorced, barely getting by, and lives in a tiny, nondescript apartment building
in a not-fancy neighborhood. Viewers may not notice that Johnny's complex is called Reseda
Heights, meaning he lives almost exactly where Daniel once did.
At the end of the 1984 classic, Johnny, the villain of the piece, ends the big match face
down on a gym mat, thoroughly defeated by Daniel at the All-Valley Karate Tournament.
To set up how Cobra Kai examines the world of California dojo karate from the point of
view of Johnny, it opens with a shot to let the world know exactly where it's starting
from, philosophically speaking: with Johnny face down on a messy bed, beaten not by Daniel,
but by the harsh travails of a disappointing life for over the past 30 years.
The fate of one Cobra Kai character is tragic and sad, but it also provided the series'
writers with a chance to make an extremely subtle nod to a famous line from the original
Karate Kid movie, and which makes it ghoulishly prophetic in the process.
It was a real coup for Cobra Kai to get actor Rob Garrison to make an appearance on the
show in 2019, seeing as how he'd retired from acting and had only appeared in one other
project in nearly 25 years. He reprised his role as Tommy, one of Johnny Lawrence's Cobra
Kai friends and fellow bullies from The Karate Kid.
In Cobra Kai, Tommy is dying, and he has one last day of drinking, riding motorcycles,
and camping with his friends before passing away in his sleep. That at least completed
his character's unresolved arc after so many years. The last viewers see of Tommy is when
his lifeless corpse is zipped into a body bag. That's a reference to the first Karate
Kid when Johnny fights in the climactic All-Valley Karate Tournament, when Tommy roots on his
compatriot, who is thoroughly putting a beatdown on Daniel.
"Are you sure you're okay? Can you go on?"
"Get him a body bag!"
Sadly, the real-life Garrison died just a few months after his Cobra Kai appearance,
making it extra touching that he returned to the franchise decades later for such a
silly, and yes, morbid joke.
In the first season episode "Cobra Kai Never Dies," Daniel LaRusso makes breakfast for
his kids, proudly and enthusiastically whipping up a sugary concoction of batter, fruit, and
chocolate chips he calls "Bananarama Pancakes."
That's a cute bit of goofy dad wordplay, but it also alludes to a music cue from the first
Karate Kid movie. The movie came out in 1984, during the brief period of time when English
vocal group Bananarama was extremely popular in the United States.
One of the trio's biggest hits was "Cruel Summer," which is also the song that soundtracks
Daniel's first bicycle ride to his new school in The Karate Kid. The synth-pop classic doesn't
actually appear on the film's official soundtrack, so that's an Easter egg just for fans extremely
familiar with the movie itself.
The song is so associated with The Karate Kid that a cover of the tune showed up in
a second-season episode of Cobra Kai, during a similar establishing shot of a bustling
day at school.
The Karate Kid spawned a hefty film and television universe. Many of the entries were largely
forgotten by the time the first season of Cobra Kai reached a paying audience on YouTube,
such as the ill-fated 1994 reboot starring Hilary Swank, the 2010 remake starring Jaden
Smith and Jackie Chan, and the 1989 animated The Karate Kid television series.
But if the circumstances of Cobra Kai are to be interpreted to their logical but extreme
end, there's another film series that could be considered a part of the Karate Kid extended
universe.
In Cobra Kai, Johnny Lawrence is divorced from his former wife, Shannon, the mother
of his son, Robby. In the 2010 movie Hot Tub Time Machine, which is partially set in the
1980s, Cobra Kai star William Zabka plays a guy named Rick, and Diora Baird plays his
wife. Baird portrays Shannon on Cobra Kai, implying that they're the same couple, and
that things obviously ended badly at some point.
"Oh really? One more bet, how about that?"
"No, Ricky, you said one more bet and you'd be done!"
"I also said 'Shut the f--- up,' remember that?"
"Pulpo," the second to last episode of season two of Cobra Kai, includes the unlikely sight
of longtime enemies Johnny and Daniel on a double date together, albeit reluctantly.
They do have a bit of fun when they recount their long and violent rivalry.
They also pinpoint the weird moment when it might have all began.
"You spilled a blueberry pie on my shirt."
"That's because he put it on my chair first. He's leaving out the details."
Speaking of leaving out the details: this inciting act of aggression may strike even
the biggest Karate Kid fans as unfamiliar, and surprisingly, there's a good reason for
that. Johnny and Daniel beginning a war over blueberry pie was scripted, but didn't make
it into the final cut of the movie.
In 2012, Karate Kid director John Avildsen posted a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage
to YouTube, including one of actors Ralph Macchio and William Zabka rehearsing a scene
of Daniel and Johnny attempting to humiliate each other with the help of a little dessert.
"So you take his pie, then you get up."
Many of the major cast members of the original The Karate Kid movies from the 1980s show
up for at least a cursory cameo at some point in the first two seasons of Cobra Kai. Martin
Kove even shows up as the presumed dead Kreese to bother and motivate Johnny, and Randee
Handler recurs as Daniel's mother, Lucille LaRusso.
One notable omission, at least in the first two seasons: Elisabeth Shue, and her character
Ali Mills, is nowhere to be found, apparently not yet ready to reprise her role as a love
interest and source of tension between her ex-boyfriend Johnny and his rival Daniel.
Last mentioned as having left Daniel for a UCLA football player in The Karate Kid Part
II, Ali may not appear in the first two seasons of Cobra Kai, but her presence is strongly
felt throughout. Daniel and Johnny explain and dissect their love triangle from long
ago, and Daniel lets slip that Ali became a pediatric surgeon and moved to Denver with
her oncologist husband all of which he ascertained from a little Facebook snooping.
One of the final shots of season two shows the screen of Johnny's angrily discarded phone,
displaying a friend request from one Ali Mills-Schwarber.
Shue does appear briefly on camera in the form of a photo taken in the '80s it sits
in the trophy case at Johnny's old high school for some reason.
Los Angeles is a massive city with countless entertainment options, and yet the young people
of the Karate Kid and Cobra Kai universe seem to only ever patronize one family entertainment
establishment, both back in the '80s and today.
In The Karate Kid, Daniel takes Ali on a sweet and innocent first date to Golf 'n Stuff an
actual putt-putt course and gaming arcade located in Norwalk, California. There, they
engage in wholesome activities like air hockey, bumper boats, bumper cars, and drinking soda
pop.
Viewers learn from Cobra Kai that Johnny also took Ali on their first date to Golf 'n Stuff,
kicking off their two-year romance in high school, making it extra harsh in retrospect
that Ali and Daniel went there too. Golf 'n Stuff then shows up for real when karate student
Miguel takes out Daniel's daughter Samantha for an evening of fun.
The ninth episode of the first season of Cobra Kai is titled "Different But Same," a clue
into how the episode finds once-and-again enemies Johnny and Daniel reconnecting over
the many things they turned out to have in common.
"You look good together. Different, but same."
For example, a bout of beer-soaked reminiscing reveals that both men aren't totally over
Ali Mills, who Daniel dated in high school after she broke up with Johnny, and who Johnny
still thinks that Daniel "moved in on."
Similarly different but same is how in the previous episode, "Molting," Miguel, a Cobra
Kai trainee, spies Johnny's son, Robby, getting along a little too well with his girlfriend,
Sam, who also happens to be Daniel's daughter.
In that same episode, a group, led by Daniel's ne'er-do-well cousin, sets Johnny's car on
fire, and he blames Daniel.
What could be a very violent situation is ultimately defused by Daniel's wife, Amanda,
who suggests her husband hand over, free of charge, a car of Johnny's selection from one
of the many lots owned by their LaRusso Auto Group.
"I thought you sold Porsches."
"Yeah, right, in your dreams."
Daniel escorts Johnny to a dealership full of selections and instructs, "Choose." That's
the same simple line delivered in the same simple way that Mr. Miyagi offered Daniel
a car as a birthday present back in The Karate Kid.
In the years since the events of the original Karate Kid movies took place, Daniel LaRusso
has done quite well for himself. He's married to Amanda with two kids, Samantha and Anthony,
and he owns and operates LaRusso Auto Group, a successful chain of suburban Los Angeles
car dealerships.
But he hasn't completely forgotten karate, which was an important and formative part
of his youth. The former All-Valley Karate champion uses the martial art as a recurring
bit in TV commercials for his car lots, literally karate chopping high prices and promising
to "kick the competition." These air on local television all the time, where the jealous
and resentful Johnny Lawrence sees them and finds them to be extremely corny. He isn't
wrong.
However, Johnny soon comes to realize the power and importance of branding when he makes
a TV commercial for his new-and-improved Cobra Kai dojo. Well, he doesn't do it he's proudly
not the least bit tech savvy but he recruits karate student Aisha Robinson to put the spot
together.
He does have one suggestion: to place the Cobra Kai logo at the end, rendered in chrome
so that it impressively pops off the screen. We don't see the finished result, but we have
a good idea of what Johnny's getting at. Where have Cobra Kai viewers previously seen a chrome
Cobra Kai logo that pops off the screen? At the end of every episode of Cobra Kai, that's
where.
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