These days, part of the fun of watching a movie in theaters or at home with the ability to freeze frames, is finding the Easter eggs hidden within. For the history buffs out there, the origin of the cinematic Easter egg dates back to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Supposedly one day on the set, the cast decided to have a traditional Easter egg hunt, as you do, but some of the eggs were never found and actually appeared in frames of the movie! So if you're obsessed with finding hidden messages, jokes, and ways to make you look smart in front of your friends, check out these Easter eggs!
Understandably some of these have been around for a while, but some may be new to other readers; there’s no expiration date on sharing so enjoy and have fun!
WAYNE'S WORLD is one of my favorite comedies and might still be the only SNL movie worth watching. In perhaps one of my favorite cameo appearances in a movie ever, Wayne (Mike Myers) is pulled over by a traffic cop, only to realize it's the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) from TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY. It certainly made no sense to the story of WAYNE'S WORLD, but the biggest action movie of all time had just come out a year prior, so taking advantage to have a memorable moment was perfect if you ask me.
And scene:
It is less than 3 minutes into THE LEGO MOVIE when we get some subtle shout-outs to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s previous work 21 JUMP STREET. Looking closely at the posters in Emmet’s house you can see “Teen Copz” and “Macho and the Nerd”, which is actually the Russian title for the film starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.
Back in the late nineties, Quentin Tarantino and Mira Sorvino were something of an item. That would explain the inexplicit Tarantino Easter eggs. There is an ad for Red Apple Cigarettes, the brand of cigarettes used throughout PULP FICTION (and other QT movies), seen in the background.
Big Kahuna Burger, the fictional Hawaiian themed burger chain created by Quentin Tarantino, makes an appearance as well. The chain featured in RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION and Robert Rodriguez's FROM DUSK TILL DAWN to name a few is conspicuously on a couch in a scene with Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow eating junk food.
I work from home and I can honestly say I’ve watched JAWS while working. I would never watch while I’m in the office building when I go in to prove I’m alive. Nedry here isn’t even discreet; he’s just watching the movie while everyone else around him goes on about their duties. The disgruntled designer of the park’s computer network certainly paid the price of incompetence later. This of course is an obvious nod JAWS which is also from the director of JURASSIC PARK, Steven Spielberg.
While this may not be considered an egg, I found it to be pretty funny and it even has an interesting back story. Pictured above is a shot from the tribunal scene in PLANET OF THE APES when the said apes try to determine Taylor's (Charlton Heston) origins. As you can see, the shot captures the proverbial principle of “Three wise monkeys” doing the “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil” gestures. I thought it was funny when I saw the film; some comic relief never hurt anyone.
Now let’s hear about it from Charlton Heston:
"It's a curious thing, there is a kind of an accident in the film that I think both Frank and I sort of half regret being in, and oddly enough a number of critics have picked it up and said this is a phoney thing. It is in the "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" tableau. All the other things the monkeys do, the cliches that they use, that you can justify because theirs was a mimicking culture, and they would logically mimic the speech cliches, as well as the cultural cliches, of today. But there's no way you could justify that, that indeed is a phoney. When we were shooting the scene, Frank said, "You know, it would be terribly funny to have a gag of them doing that." We laughed at it, and he said. "No, it's a phoney. I shouldn't do it." I said, "Why don't you do one just for the dailies," and he said, "All right." So we did it in, laughed, and everybody thought it was marvelous, but he didn't want it in the final cut. Then, somehow it got in the rough cut, and all the studio echelons saw it and said, "No, don't change it!" Then, they had the first preview, and it was an enormous success. So there it is." [via]
Got a cool Easter Egg discovery? E-mail us at: eastereggs@joblo.com with any you'd like to see featured in future columns!