Everybody loves in-jokes, and Hollywood filmmakers are no exception.
Tracking down their carefully concealed Easter eggs has become a full-time hobby for some
fans, but even the most practiced eye occasionally misses something.
Here's a look at some well-hidden Easter eggs that flew by even the biggest movie fans.
The Departed
It only makes sense that a film scholar like Martin Scorsese would pay homage to those
who came before him with some well placed Easter eggs.
And he did just that in the 2006 film The Departed, which used hidden X's on screen
to signal which characters were going to die - just like in the 1932 gangland classic Scarface.
Even more subtle?
The only straight shooter in the film, Dignam, usually appears with a straight line behind
his head.
Leave it to Scorsese to hide an Easter egg within an Easter egg!
Toy Story
You wouldn't expect the family friendly classic Toy Story to be linked with the decidedly
non-family friendly horror opus The Shining, but there are actually a number of Easter
eggs in the Toy Story franchise referencing Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
The first and most subtle of them all?
The carpet in Sid's house of horrors is almost identical to the carpet in The Shining's iconic
hotel.
We'll never look at Woody's escape quite the same way again.
Wes Craven and Sam Raimi
You can't really talk about the history of horror movies over the last few decades without
referencing directors Sam Raimi and Wes Craven.
Which is fitting, because the two also referenced each other in nearly all of their projects.
It began in Raimi's 1981 film The Evil Dead, which included a poster of Craven's classic
The Hills Have Eyes.
Craven answered by having a character in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street watch The Evil Dead.
Raimi upped the ante by placing Freddy's iconic glove in a couple of scenes in 1987's Evil
Dead 2, and the friendly rivalry even continued into the '90s with Craven's Scream showing
a group of teenagers choosing not to watch Evil Dead.
That spelled the end of their onscreen back-and-forth until after Craven's death in 2015, when Raimi
paid homage in season 2 of Ash Vs. Evil Dead by once again including a poster for The Hills
Have Eyes.
Die Hard with a Vengeance
In the 1995 blockbuster Die Hard with a Vengeance, John McClane is asked what he's been doing
since the events of Die Hard 2.
He responds that he's been "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo."
That's a nod to the Statler Brothers song "Flowers on the Wall" - which his character
in 1994's Pulp Fiction is listening to during a particularly memorable scene.
And the Easter egg had extra significance because Die Hard with a Vengeance also featured
Pulp Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson.
Neato!
Zootopia
You might not think Frozen and Zootopia have much in common other than both being huge
Disney mega-hits.
But midway through Zootopia, Judy and Nick interrogate a suspect who is very familiar
to fans of Frozen.
"What were you gonna do with those night howlers Wessleton?"
"It's Weaselton!"
The character is voiced by Alan Tudyk, who not coincidentally played a very similar character
in Frozen:
"The Duke of Weasel Town.
"Wessleton!"
"The Duke of Weaselton!"
Hiring the same voice actor to set up an Easter egg?
Now that's going above and beyond.
Back to the Future
In the classic Bullwinkle segment Peabody's Improbable History, a boy named Sherman travels
through time learning lessons from his mentor, the super-intelligent dog Peabody.
If that sounds kind of like the premise of Back to the Future, where a boy named Marty
travels through time and learns lessons from his mentor Doc Brown, don't worry, because
those parallels weren't lost on the folks making Back to the Future.
When Marty arrives in the past, he crashes into a barn and encounters a wide-eyed kid
who thinks Marty is an alien.
That boy's name?
Sherman Peabody.
Well played.
Fight Club
David Fincher has earned a reputation as a meticulous director over the years, with stories
of actors having to suffer through hundreds of takes to find the exact one he wants.
But even for Fincher, his keen attention to detail in Fight Club takes the cake—or the
coffee: he claims to have included a Starbucks cup somewhere in every single scene.
"When deep space exploration ramps up it'll be the corporations that name everything:
Planet Starbucks."
There are tons of subtle hints that point to the movie's big twist, but this might be
the only Easter egg that took a ridiculous amount of planning to offer an uncanny commentary
on the proliferation of brand awareness and ownership hidden in a movie that's explicitly
denouncing corporate ownership of human lives.
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