- 11 hours ago
Some Easter eggs aren’t cute, they’re downright vicious. Here are 10 of the most spiteful movie hidden details ever.
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00:00There's an undeniable art to movie easter eggs.
00:04Audiences love to seek them out for their cleverness and ingenuity,
00:08often serving as a reward for keen-eyed, attentive viewers.
00:12More often than not, easter eggs are a playful tip of the hat to observant audience members,
00:17perhaps containing a sly nod to a wider aspect of the series' lore,
00:22or simply including a cute message acknowledging that the viewer is paying attention.
00:26But every now and then, a filmmaker will sneak a secret into their film
00:30that's a little more nefarious, perhaps even genuinely mean-spirited.
00:36So I am Gareth, this is WhatCulture, and here are the most spiteful movie easter eggs ever.
00:42Project Mayhem Destroys Alien on VHS Fight Club
00:46Now it's no secret that David Fincher had an absolutely hellish time
00:50working on his feature debut that was Alien 3,
00:53with executive meddling resulting in a messy, if intriguing, end-product
00:58that he still disowns to this very day.
01:01But Fincher seemingly could not resist getting some petty revenge while shooting Fight Club.
01:06In the montage of Project Mayhem's soldiers carrying out their various missions of criminal mischief,
01:12some of them are seen demagnetizing all the videotapes in a rental store.
01:17If you look closely, one of the rows of VHS tapes is filled with copies of Ridley Scott's original Alien.
01:23Presumably, the rental store they shot the scene in didn't have any copies of Alien 3 lingering around.
01:29So Fincher had to settle for Scott's film, which, in the casual sense,
01:33actually led to Fincher's misfire of a directorial debut, if you think about it.
01:38Before anyone considers this a mere coincidence,
01:41remember that Fincher is one of the most detail-orientated filmmakers working today.
01:45If something is up front in the frame, he definitely meant it to be there.
01:49Now, I've got a quick question for you.
01:51What is a fascinating Easter egg that you think more people need to know about?
01:55Well, you let me know all about them in the comments section right down below.
01:58Siskel and Ebert are aliens. They live.
02:01Plenty of directors have taken blatant potshots at film critics for negative reviews they've given previously.
02:08Though, one of the more hilariously subtle put-downs occurs in John Carpenter's They Live.
02:14Carpenter's brilliantly unhinged sci-fi satire revolves around a drifter, Nada,
02:21who learns that the ruling class are, in fact, aliens with skeletal faces,
02:25who are transmitting a signal to keep the human race pacified and unaware of this fact.
02:30In the film's climax, when Nada destroys the signal and the aliens' true identities are revealed,
02:36a montage shows various aliens being outed for who they really are.
02:41This includes two slightly familiar-looking aliens on TV talking about the excessive violence in the movies of Carpenter and George A. Romero,
02:50with a placard behind them that reads,
02:52No Independent Thought.
02:54It's easily missed.
02:55But these aliens are actually supposed to be film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert,
03:01neither of whom had showed much love to Carpenter's more recent films at the time.
03:05Even if you don't recognize Siskel's distinctive suit or Ebert's hair-glasses combo,
03:11Siskel's nasal voice as he talks about Carpenter and Romero is a dead giveaway.
03:16It may be funny, but it's also clearly the work of a frustrated filmmaker keen to vent that the two most famous film critics on the planet won't stop trashing his output.
03:26He clearly wasn't happy.
03:27Bryan Singer calls X-Men The Last Stand the worst.
03:30X-Men Apocalypse Halfway through X-Men Apocalypse,
03:34Gene Gray and several other mutants go to see Star Wars Return of the Jedi at the cinema,
03:40only to emerge disappointed that it didn't quite live up to the brilliance of The Empire Strikes Back.
03:45As they debate the film's merit, the scene ends with Gene knowingly quipping,
03:50Well, at least we can all agree that the third one is always the worst.
03:53If to the casual observer this might seem like a general joke about the tendency for movie threequels to disappoint,
04:00it's really a more pointed stab at the third X-Men movie, The Last Stand.
04:05After shooting the first two X-Men movies, Apocalypse director Bryan Singer ended up stepping away from the third,
04:11which was ultimately helmed by Brett Ratner to a wildly indifferent response from fans and critics alike.
04:18Given that Singer essentially used the film before Apocalypse X-Men Days of Future Past to undo everything he didn't like about The Last Stand,
04:25he evidently still had a chip on his shoulder about what went down.
04:29The irony, of course, is that Apocalypse itself ended up being a colossal disappointment.
04:33And because it's the third of the X-Men prequel movies, the joke applies to itself also, resulting in a bit of a cell phone.
04:41And considering that both The Last Stand and Apocalypse were written by Simon Kinberg,
04:45there's something weirdly poetic about that.
04:48Alec Trevelyan was named after a British censor who hated Bond movies, GoldenEye.
04:53The villain of GoldenEye is of course revealed to be James Bond's former ally, 006, aka Alec Trevelyan.
05:01Because the film wasn't based on any existing Ian Fleming story,
05:05the villain's memorable name was instead dreamt up by the filmmakers themselves,
05:09the origins of which are hilariously savage.
05:12So as it turns out, the name Alec Trevelyan was inspired by John Trevelyan,
05:17who served as secretary of the British Board of Film Censors from 1958 to 1971.
05:23Throughout his career, Trevelyan was known as a strict censor,
05:27particularly on major commercial films,
05:29and had a marked distaste for the earlier Bond films,
05:33referring to their callous sadism in his 1973 autobiography, What the Censor Saw.
05:39He did not like himself some 007.
05:41And so was a measure of snide payback against Trevelyan,
05:45who in fairness died way back in 1986.
05:48His name was co-opted by GoldenEye's villain,
05:51who you could say is himself a rather callous sadist, no?
05:55Eddie Van Halen trolls his own bandmates, Back to the Future.
05:58Few who've seen Back to the Future will ever forget the scene where Marty masquerades as Darth Vader
06:05and blasts loud rock music at his father George in order to wake him up and convince him to ask Lorraine out.
06:11You probably noticed that the cassette Marty inserts into the Waltman is labelled Van Halen,
06:16but considering the label is only on screen for around a second,
06:20you might have missed that the word Edward precedes it in much smaller type.
06:24There's an entire backstory behind this.
06:27Basically, the filmmakers wanted to use Van Halen's music for the scene.
06:30But when all the band members except for Eddie Van Halen himself refused,
06:35well, they had to get creative.
06:37Because Eddie Van Halen had previously recorded music for another Universal film released the year prior,
06:42The Wildlife,
06:43some of those compositions were simply reused here as imitation Van Halen music.
06:49Very clever.
06:49But because neither the rest of the band nor the record label had given permission for Van Halen's brand to be invoked,
06:56the cassette couldn't simply say Van Halen.
06:59Yet, given that Eddie Van Halen's real name was Edward Van Halen,
07:03director Robert Zemeckis was able to get away with the name drop by including the musician's full name on the label.
07:08As we all know, being technically correct is always the best kind of correct.
07:12The dog chews on a Godzilla toy because Godzilla was the movie's box office rival, Armageddon.
07:17Michael Bay has never been one to mince words or actions,
07:22and was well aware that his 1998 disaster flick Armageddon faced intense competition in the blockbuster sphere,
07:29given that it was releasing mere weeks after both Deep Impact and Roland Emmerich's Godzilla.
07:34Nevertheless, Bay forged ahead,
07:37and decided to throw the gauntlet down to the king of the monsters in an amusing way.
07:41By opening his film with a fleeting glimpse of a bike messenger's dog grabbing a Godzilla toy in its mouth,
07:48and also attacking an inflatable Godzilla.
07:50How mature.
07:51The implication, of course, being that Godzilla could be bested by a tiny harmless puppy.
07:56It's all in the spirit of competition at the end of the day,
07:59but Bay clearly wanted to let Emmerich know,
08:01I'm coming for your wig.
08:03And Bay's cockiness turned out to be well-founded, too,
08:06as Armageddon not only outgrossed both aforementioned movies by a massive margin,
08:11but ended up the highest-grossing film of 1998.
08:15Say that, Zilla.
08:16A film critic is murdered who resembles a real film critic who hated Dirty Harry.
08:22The Deadpool.
08:22The fifth and final film in the Dirty Harry series sees Harry Callaghan pursuing a twisted serial killer
08:29who murders celebrities in order to manipulate a Deadpool game.
08:33One of the killer's victims is a high-profile San Francisco film critic by the name of Molly Fisher.
08:39And given that much of the film is centered around Hollywood and filmmaking,
08:43the presence of such a character isn't at all out of place.
08:46However, Fisher is actually a stand-in for real-life film critic Pauline Kale,
08:51who was similarly a famous San Francisco film reviewer
08:54and to whom Fisher bears a strong physical resemblance.
08:58Kale had previously criticized the original Dirty Harry as a fascist movie
09:02and panned the other films in the series.
09:05So the decision was made to write a proxy of Kale into the franchise's final installment.
09:10While most other movies on this list were a little more playful with their mockery,
09:14the Deadpool actually kills Fisher off in a grimly protracted scene,
09:18where the killer tells her a critic with a heart,
09:21this naturally flew right over the head of most popcorn-gobbling audiences at the time.
09:27Though it's actually an incredibly mean thumbing of the nose
09:30at someone who committed the crime of just disliking a movie.
09:34It's very cruel.
09:35Everything about Lord Farquaad is a slight against former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Shrek.
09:41While the film as a whole is primarily a parody of fairy tales and Disney animation,
09:46there is a more pointed, prodding layer of satire tucked beneath the surface in Shrek.
09:52The film's antagonist, Lord Farquaad, is widely believed to be inspired by then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner,
09:59who forced Shrek producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to resign as Disney's chairman in 1994.
10:05Katzenberg responded by accepting a massive $250 million payoff
10:09and founding DreamWorks' pictures mere weeks later,
10:13after which he sets his sights on finally bringing Shrek to the big screen.
10:18Beyond the obvious satire of Disney tropes,
10:21the film's presentation of Farquaad is clearly intended to rankle Eisner.
10:25For starters, both men preside over a magical kingdom of sorts,
10:29Farquaad's facial features are not dissimilar to those of Eisner,
10:33and Farquaad's diminutive stature is likely a riff on Eisner's alleged mocking of Katzenberg's height in real life.
10:40This game of tit-for-tat saw Disney refuse to air commercials for Shrek on Radio Disney,
10:46before DreamWorks released Shrek on home video the same day as Disney's Monsters, Inc.,
10:51and Shrek then went on to beat it for the Best Animated Film Oscar.
10:54At the end of the day, it's a case of one obscenely rich person slinging mud at another obscenely rich person.
11:01But if you thought immense wealth might make a person, I don't know, a little less petty,
11:05clearly that's not the case at all.
11:07Patton Oswalt takes another opportunity to dunk on Star Wars 22 Jump Street.
11:1222 Jump Street is full of hilarious blink-and-you'll-miss-it gags,
11:16and the catty-est of all surely appears during Patton Oswalt's cameo as a college history professor.
11:22While he's talking, focus your eyes on the chalkboard behind him,
11:26and you might notice a heading which reads Failed American Policy,
11:30under which it lists Drug War, The War on Terror, Wars in General, Cold War, Culture Wars, and Star Wars.
11:36While at face value, the history professor is presumably referring to Star Wars
11:41in terms of Ronald Reagan's proposed 1980s missile defense system,
11:45which was nicknamed the Star Wars program,
11:47looking a little bit closer reveals something else entirely.
11:51Next to Star Wars, the word prequels is faintly scrawled in parentheses,
11:57clearly referring to George Lucas' much-maligned trilogy of Star Wars prequels.
12:02It is an especially amusing easter egg given Patton Oswalt's involvement,
12:06considering that the year prior he made a famous cameo appearance in Parks and Recreation,
12:11which was largely devoted to him outlining a ridiculous fan theory for Star Wars The Force Awakens.
12:17Better still, 22 Jump Street directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were even hired a few years later
12:22to direct Solo, a Star Wars story,
12:25though they were ultimately fired mid-production due to their improv-heavy filmmaking style,
12:30and replaced with Ron Howard.
12:32Hitchcock made the villain resemble meddling producer David O. Selznick, rear window.
12:37It is quite the understatement to say that Alfred Hitchcock wasn't too fond of mega-producer David O. Selznick,
12:44for despite teaming up on the beloved likes of Rebecca, Notorious, and Spellbound,
12:49they frequently butted heads creatively.
12:51Selznick was a forthright mile-a-minute producer, while Hitch was a more quiet, reserved artist,
12:57resulting in the two clashing as Hitch felt that Selznick excessively asserted himself on his movie sets.
13:03After later cutting ties with Selznick, Hitch decided to have some fun at his expense.
13:08By conceiving the villain of his 1954 masterpiece, Rear Window, murderer Lars Thorwald,
13:14to bear a striking resemblance to the producer.
13:17Actor Raymond Burr, who was actually just 36 years of age at the time of filming,
13:22was given a voluminous mane of hair, distinctive eyeglasses, and tailored suit to resemble Selznick,
13:29who was himself 51 years old when Rear Window was being shot.
13:33Furthermore, Hitchcock allegedly coached Burr on the producer's mannerisms.
13:37From his posture and how he carried himself, to even the way he held a telephone.
13:41Though it's as easily missed today as it was by viewers of the era,
13:45it's nothing if not a savage feat of revenge by one of the greatest filmmakers there ever was.
13:51A masterful bit of trolling.
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