10 Movie Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

1. An X appears somewhere on screen every time someone is about to die in The Departed

Director Martin Scorsese says this is a homage to the original 1932 version of Scarface, which used the same technique and was even more obvious about it.

2. The carpet in Sid’s house in Toy Story is the same carpet in The Overlook Hotel in The Shining

This entire article could have been dedicated to Easter Eggs in the Toy Story series, as Pixar is known for super obscure self-referential nuances. There are several other Shining references in the third Toy Story movie as director Lee Unkrich was a huge fan of the 1980 horror-thriller.

3. There is a cup of coffee in every scene of Fight Club

Talk about product placement. According to a 1999 interview with director David Fincher, the reason the cups of joe, predominantly from Starbucks, are so ubiquitous throughout the film is to mock the fact that there is a Starbucks at just about every corner in New York City. Starbucks was in on the joke and gave Fincher permission to use their product in every scene but one in which a Starbucks would have been destroyed with a giant ball.

4. Lady and the Tramp make an appearance in 101 Dalmations

The canine duo have a cameo in the “Midnight Bark” scene, as do several of the dogs that were at the pound with Lady

5. One of the passengers in Titanic is wearing a Bruins jersey

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a photo, but several people have confirmed that there is indeed a passenger sporting a Bruins jersey as he is boarding the ship. In his autobiography, James Cameron says that this was added in because the Bruins are his favorite team. This could also be considered an anachronism since the Bruins did not exist until 1924.

6. There is a reference to the previous movie in Final Destination 3

Towards the end of the movie, a man is seen with a newspaper that has a story referencing a death scene at the hands of a woodchipper in the previous movie. The headline reads “Faulty Woodchipper to Blame”

7. Morgan Freeman’s son appears in The Shawshank Redemption

Red’s mugshot is a photo of Freeman’s son, Alfonso.

8. The actress who plays Meredith’s mother in The Parent Trap was in the original version of the film

Even better, she played the twins’ father’s girlfriend, Vicki. In the 1998 version of the film, her name is also Vicki.

9. In Good Will Hunting, the phone number on the construction company sign is the actual phone number of a construction company in Massachusetts

Matt Damon worked for the company in high school

10. The license plates in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are all abbreviations for John Hughes movies

Mr. Mom, (National Lampoon’s) Vacation, and “for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

• easter eggs
• movies