5 Genius Easter Eggs Lurking Within Famous Horror Movies

4 Halloween 2018 Subtly References The Movies It Kicked Out Of Continuity

Modern updates of old series like to shoehorn in references to their originals, be it the Kessel Run in Star Wars, Slimer in Ghostbusters, or the Spider-Man in all of the Spider-Man movies. The new Halloween similarly seeks to honor its past, even though it's only a sequel to the very first one. This means it's chock-full of references to stories it unceremoniously tossed in the trash.

In the new movie, like in Halloween II, Michael Myers obtains his butcher knife from a woman in a pink bathrobe wearing curlers in her hair. She's older, though, perhaps implying it's the same character who didn't die in this reality?

Later, Michael shows up at a bathroom stall ...

... which seems to be a shout-out to a similar moment in Halloween H20. You know, the other time they brought Jamie Lee Curtis in for a reboot in an attempt to clean up this mess of a series.

There are even references to Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, which was already in its own timeline, since the original Halloween was only a movie in that universe. And yet the evil costumes from Season Of The Witch are seen in the new flick, presumably because these children are transdimensional beings.

3 The Silence Of The Lambs' Hannibal Lecter Has Already Solved The Murders From The Very Beginning

Long before we learned he was once a Nazi-hunting samurai, Hannibal Lecter showed up in the Oscar-winning The Silence Of The Lambs. At the beginning of the movie, novice FBI agent Clarice Starling visits the incarcerated cannibal to see if he'll help with her investigation of the "Buffalo Bill" killings. Lecter shows Clarice some of his drawings -- not the crude drawings of naked women you might expect, but elaborately rendered vistas, including "the Belvedere as seen from the Duomo" in Florence. You probably assumed the message of this scene was "This guy is a massive, massive dweeb."

Then you probably forgot all about this conversation, since the rest of the movie includes ripping people's faces off, suits made of human skin, and at least one appearance from crooner Chris Isaak. But interestingly, when Clarice finally tracks down Buffalo Bill, he's in Belvedere, Ohio, home of ... OK, we know nothing about Belvedere, Ohio.

2 Psycho's Peephole Is Behind A Pretty Appropriate Painting

Alfred Hitchcock's horror masterpiece, Psycho, finds runaway secretary Marion Crane checking into the creepy Bates Motel, only to be murdered by the slasher equivalent of Mrs. Doubtfire. Before that, though, Marion dines with Norman Bates in a room filled with old paintings and stuffed birds. In retrospect, it would be surprising if anyone didn't get murdered there.

After Marion excuses herself to take her fateful shower, Norman pulls back one of the paintings, to reveal a peephole he uses to spy on guests.

The painting itself is a subtle in-joke "depicting the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders" -- which, for you non-theologians, is about a woman being spied on by two creeps while she's trying to bathe. Unless you were an art historian, or an accomplished peeper, you probably didn't catch the reference. Hitchcock seemingly had great fun with this joke, not just putting it the film but also calling attention to it in the movie's weird-ass trailer. The unusual preview sees Hitch leading audiences on a tour of the Bates Motel. Upon reaching the painting, he points to it and says, "This picture has great significance because ..." Then he just walks away.

1 You Don't Have To Be A Conspiracy Nut To Find Hidden Numbers All Over The Shining

There are a lot of obsessives transfixed by The Shining -- someone even made an entire movie about their obsession with this movie. But while it's easy to get lost in the theories about moon landing hoaxes and hidden minotaurs, you might overlook some of the creepier details Kubrick actually did hide in there. Please do not overlook our pun, though - it took us six hours to come up with that.

At the risk of going full tinfoil hat, there are a bunch of repeating numbers in The Shining. Take the number 42, for instance. It first shows up on Danny's shirt.

Later, Danny is watching a TV (which oddly doesn't seem to be plugged in) playing the movie Summer Of '42.

The license plate on Dick Halloran's rental car also contains '42.' Kubrick famously changed the number of a particularly haunted room from the book's 217 to 237, since the hotel feared guests would avoid their actual room 217. (Ironically, it's instead become their most requested room.) The product of 2, 3, and 7 is ... 666. Wait, no, 42.

The number shows up in even more subtle ways. Like how there are exactly 42 cars parked at the Overlook at the beginning, a news report mentions a "$42 million spending bill," and when Jack visits the bar, the stools are in groups of four and two: