Easter eggs are usually fun: sidebar references, visual gags, or inside jokes that directors
put in movies as a reward for eagle-eyed viewers.
But some filmmakers use them as opportunities to startle—or outright frighten—audiences.
These movie Easter eggs are so creepy, we almost wish we'd never found them at all.
Trophy room
You don't have to watch the Alien movies to know Xenomorphs are bad news.
If something out there is tough enough to actually exterminate one of these things,
they've gotta be super hardcore.
And we're not just talking about Ripley.
"Not bad for a human."
So if Predator 2 really wanted to hammer home how powerful those Predators really are are,
having them take down a Xenomorph would be a good way to do it.
Well, mission accomplished.
Just before the film's climactic battle against the Predators, Danny Glover's character, Lt.
Mike Harrington, comes across a case filled with various skulls.
For about a second, the camera shows what is clearly a Xenomorph skull, which is as
much a proof as any that Predators are not to be messed with.
If they can kill some of the most vicious aliens in the galaxy, steer clear.
This brief crossover predated the AvP franchise by over a decade, though the jury's still
out on whether that wait was worth it.
Ash vs. Freddy
Directors Sam Raimi and Wes Craven really like to reference one another, as evidenced
by the several macabre Easter eggs between them.
The first came by way of A Nightmare on Elm Street, when Nancy is desperate to stay awake...
so she watches Evil Dead.
It barely works, and she soon shuts it off in favor of other methods of staying awake.
In Evil Dead 2, Raimi returned the favor by including several brief shots of Freddy Krueger's
glove hanging over the door in the shed where Ash gets his chainsaw hand.
Apparently, this reference was so nice he had to do it twice—in the series Ash vs.
Evil Dead, the glove appeared again.
Groovy.
Mid-world Pennywise
Stephen King loves to pepper his books with references to his other works.
He's like Pixar, but you know, if every horrifying character was Sid.
"Where are your rebel friends now?
Hahaha."
The 2017 adaptation of King's The Dark Tower series honors this rich tradition with one
of the creepiest Easter eggs of all.
As Jake enters Mid-World in the film, he walks through an abandoned carnival.
At one point, he comes across a statue of a severed hand holding three balloons.
And what creepy Stephen King character loves his balloons?
Yep, that would be Pennywise, the scariest clown this side of the sewer system.
And just in case you weren't sure, above Jake stands a large, crumbling sign that clearly
says PENNYWISE.
In addition to being pretty freaky, this egg actually makes narrative sense.
Pennywise can be anything and and go anywhere.
So why wouldn't he chill in Mid-World, looking for a meal or two?
After all, they float over there too.
Overlooked design
For a children's cartoon, Toy Story is pretty creepy to start with.
The idea that toys are alive and watching their little owners at all times is a little
unsettling—and the filmmakers made things even weirder by including references to one
of the creepiest films ever: The Shining.
In the first Toy Story, take a look at the carpet in the upstairs hallway of Sid's house.
If the pattern seems familiar, it's because it first appeared in the Overlook Hotel in
Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the The Shining.
And even freakier, the carpet is prominently featured in a scene when Danny plays with
his toys.
So not only is Sid a psychopathic toy torturer who probably belongs on a FBI watchlist, he
also lives in the house-sized version of the Overlook.
Not content with just making creepy references in one movie, Pixar decided to load up Toy
Story 3 with even more.
In the control room of the daycare center, the intercom is an exact copy of the one in
the Overlook manager's office, and the box of tissues is printed with that carpet design
again.
The number 237, the number of the haunted hotel room in The Shining, also shows up several
times.
"Who's Velocistar237?"
"Ooh!
That's just a dinosaur toy down the street.
That's nothing.
Let me just take care of that."
The number appears again on a security camera labeled OVERLOOK R237 and on the license plate
of a garbage truck.
Either the Pixar crew just wants to creep out kids subconsciously, or they just really
like horror movies.
An unfortunate cameo
Gyro Captain is one of the weirder characters in Mad Max: The Road Warrior.
The unhinged gyrocopter pilot became the leader of the oil refinery tribe and led them north
at the end of the movie, never to be heard from again.
At least until Fury Road.
Nux's car has a skull on one of its pikes—and not just any skull, but the skull of a pilot
with a flight helmet that looks creepily similar to the Gyro Captain's.
The design is a little different, but how many other characters in the Mad Max franchise
wear flight helmets?
If that really is the Gyro Captain's head, it makes Road Warrior's ending more bittersweet,
because it suggests that the Warboys caught up with the oil refinery tribe, executed their
leaders, and took them into the Citadel.
Whatever happened to them, it can't be pretty.
Puppet show
Creepy puppets are spine-tinglingly scary when they're done right.
Although the Saw franchise has had its ups and downs over the years, Billy the Puppet
remains consistently creepy—and he isn't content to spook us in just one franchise.
He keeps showing up in others.
Take, for example, Dead Silence, a movie about evil, life-ending dolls.
During a scene in which the main characters explore an abandoned theater, there's a brief
shot showing Billy with the other paranormal dolls.
The whole place is literally a creepy doll club where they just all hang out together—which
makes that the creepiest theater in existence.
But our favorite killer puppet didn't stop there.
Insidious is on Billy's list of cameos, too.
Early in the movie, a rough sketch of Billy shows up on the blackboard in a classroom.
From a different angle, you can see another, less creepy Easter egg on the same board:
The director's name, James Wan.
Since Wan directed Dead Silence, Insidious, and Saw, we guess it makes sense that he'd
include these Easter eggs, even if it creeps the audience out by implying that Billy is
following them into other movies.
Doctor Doom
When Jyn bumped into Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba on Jedha, it seemed like a fun little
nod to A New Hope.
We knew that within a week Dr. Evazan would be threatening Luke Skywalker in Mos Eisley,
and Ponda Baba would be short one arm.
For some reason, though, the production team couldn't let this little moment stand as a
simple nod to the original film—they had to create one of the more disturbing Easter
eggs in Star Wars history.
In A New Hope, Dr. Evazan tells Luke that he has a "death sentence" in 12 systems, but
we never really find out why.
Rogue One fills in the gaps.
Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed that a few background citizens on Jedha had their
heads cut in half.
These poor people are the "Decraniated."
A mysterious doctor named Roofoo created them by destroying their brains and making them
his slaves.
Even more disturbing?
The official Star Wars website confirmed that Roofoo is an alias for Dr. Evazan, turning
a fun little Easter egg into a part of a full-blown horror story.
Now we're even happier that Obi-Wan dealt with those creeps before they could mess with
Luke's brain.
Norwegian spoiler
In the opening scene of the 1982 version of The Thing, American researchers discover a
Norwegian crew trying to dispatch a dog.
One terrified member of the party is screaming something at the Americans, but there aren't
any subtitles, so for all English-speaking audiences can tell, he's just yelling gibberish
brought on by madness.
If you speak Norwegian, however, the movie immediately becomes even more terrifying.
What he's actually saying is: "Get the hell away!
It's not a dog!
It's a thing!
It's imitating a dog!
It's not real!
Get away, idiots!"
But since none of the American characters are, you know, fluent in Norwegian, they don't
understand what the crazy old man is saying.
And we know what happens next.
A whooole lot of this:
It's a creepy little Easter egg that totally changes the story, turning the whole thing
into an ironic tragedy.
We also feel terrible for that researcher who tried to help them, only to get shot for
his troubles.
If only the researchers had brushed up on their languages, they might have survived.
X marks the spot
From the start of The Departed, it's obvious that most of these characters won't make it
out of the movie alive.
But what we didn't expect was for director Martin Scorsese to physically mark every character
who wouldn't.
Yup, every character who gets whacked appears with an X nearby at some point.
Some are really obvious, others not so much.
Frank Costello is marked early in the movie, with the crossbeams of his tire garage forming
an X. Matt Damon's character has Xs around him all throughout the movie even though doesn't
bite the bullet until the final act.
But, of course, there's a big red X on the carpet right before he finally does meet his
end
Dedication to this Easter egg reaches almost comical proportions near the end of the movie
in the elevator scene, when Costigan stands right next to a giant tape X.
Even less subtle are the Xs foretelling Captain Queenan's end—they show up in the windows
of the building that he's falling from.
Scorsese's little inside joke turns a cool gangster movie into a super morbid treasure
hunt.
Swan bones
Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is filled with background imagery, from morphing faces showing
true identities to crazy mirror tricks.
Watch the movie again knowing all of the visual tricks, and the whole story becomes even more
unsettling... but the creepiest Easter egg is found in the ballet director's office.
Pay attention when Nina goes and asks for her part.
Right next to the director's desk is a model of swan skeleton in front of one of the film's
many mirrors—an insanely creepy decoration to just have around in the office, but also
an unsettling foreshadowing of Nina's eventual collapse.
All throughout the movie Aronofsky uses mirrors to represent Nina's fractured personality,
so this little detail couldn't be anything but a reference to Nina's terrible fate.
Face-off
As if Psycho didn't have enough terrifying visuals in it, director Alfred Hitchcock made
sure to sneak in one more at the end, just for good measure.
Not content with scaring the audience consciously, he also wanted to get under their skin.
Specifically, with the final shot of Norman Bates.
"Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly."
That's actually one frame of Norman's face merged with the corpse of his mother.
Not only is it terrifying, it shows that Norman's mother is now in complete control of his persona.
Hitchcock didn't want any subtlety about how Norman turns out, and this frame was his way
of showing one last time how messed up the character is.
Not that we really needed the reminder, considering the guy just spent the whole movie dressing
up like his mom and stabbing people.
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