55 Details Hidden Deep Within In Famous Films

Now seems like a good time to stay inside and rewatch every movie ever made. Trust us, there's a ton of stuff you missed the first time you watched them, or even the first dozen times ... 

1. Psycho 

Norman Bates drills a peephole through a painting and uses it to perv on guests. You'd have to be an art scholar to recognize that the painting shows the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Bible -- a story, appropriately, about men peeping on a bathing woman. 

2. Harry Potter 

In the Harry Potter series, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers keep leaving thanks to a series of absurd circumstances. Believe it or not, this is based on a gag from This is Spinal Tap, in which the band's drummers keep dying and have to be replaced. 

3. Pirates of the Caribbean

Jack Sparrow wears a medallion with a Muslim moon and crescent. This could just mean he's traveled the world, foreshadowing the global pirate alliance we later see. But it could also tie into a possible inspiration for his greater design, the mascara-wearing Muslim pirate Jack Ward. 

4. Jurassic Park 

The boy in the film escapes into a walk-in freezer, and a raptor who chases him slips on the icy floor. But why was the door open? We see that earlier -- Hammond overindulging in the park's ice cream. 

5. Predators 

In the Predator camp, we see a bunch of human skulls, and also one that looks human but is a little different. It's a Homo erectus skull from our ancestor who walked the Earth 70,000 years ago. Predators have been hunting us for a long time.

6. Coraline  

7. Star Wars

Besides looking like a samurai, Darth Vader is modeled after the first costumed supervillain ever. That's Lightning, from the 1938 serial The Fighting Devil Dogs. Before the slick black mask, earlier drafts of Vader had him as an ordinary human or looking like a Stormtrooper. 

8. The Phantom Menace

Whatever their shortcomings, the Star Wars prequels had great scores, and the new themes contained references to old ones. Palpatine's happy march music is a reworking of the Emperor's original theme. Anakin's chipper theme incorporates the classic Imperial March, as does his and Padme's love theme. 

9. Rogue One 

Rogue One hid a puzzle in its posters that was much more interesting than the movie. The theater displays held a message in the Star Wars language of Aurebesh, which fans, of course, managed to translate. It contained Imperial slogans -- including a quote from Grand Moff Tarkin, the first clue that he was coming back for this film. 

10. The Last Jedi

Luke's arrival at the end is filled with hints that he's just a projection. He leaves no footprints, he wields a lightsaber that we saw destroyed, and he's looking a lot younger. Most subtly, flakes of salt are falling, and we can hear them hit Kylo's blade. They don't react to Luke's. 

11. Rango 

Kids watching Rango might not recognize the duo dressed in red and green in the car Rango lands on. But those are the Hunter S. Thompson character and Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Depp's other desert movie. The weird part is Rango himself is also dressed as Depp's Fear and Loathing character ... 

12. Zootopia

The fox in Zootopia is wearing the same clothes as Brer Fox from Disney's Song of the South, while the bunny is wearing the same clothes as Brer Rabbit. We can only assume that Disney wanted us to revisit this earlier film, yet Song of the South is unavailable on streaming for some reas-- Oh, yeah. 

13. The Conjuring 2

14. Guardians of the Galaxy

The Guardians' various past crimes are stitched onto the pants they're given in prison. Gamora's rap sheet is the longest. As for Quill, his crimes include "Having sex with members of a royal family."

15. Iron Man 3 

Happy Hogan is watching Downton Abbey in the hospital, a scene about a chauffeur falling in love with the lady of the house. In the comics, chauffeur Happy marries Pepper Potts. He doesn't get a happy ending in the movies ... but let's give him time. 

16. Captain Marvel 

Right after she lands on Earth, Captain Marvel picks up a VHS copy of the 1983 movie The Right Stuff. Maybe she should have watched it to get a clue about her forgotten origins. It's a movie about test pilots who venture into space.

17. Avengers: Endgame 

The gang namedrops a bunch of time travel movies to explain their heist, which does not conform to Back to the Future rules. But the movie does recreate a BTTF shot right at the climax. A leviathan snapping at Rocket (before falling into dust) is modeled after an inflatable Jaws snapping at Marty. 

18. Beauty and the Beast

Right before Gaston falls from the tower, there's a subliminal shot of skulls in his eyes. So, in case you have been anxiously wondering if your Disney crush Gaston survived the movie, sorry, he didn't. 

19. Us

There are so many rabbits hidden in Us, between the initially inexplicable bunny shot and the ending that reveals what's really going on. Here's one you probably missed: Zora changes out of a shirt with a rabbit on it to one with the word "Tho." That's the Vietnamese word for rabbit.

20. Get Out

21. Split

The final shot of Split, which connects it to the film from 16 years prior, Unbreakable, took everyone by surprise. Maybe it shouldn't have. The poster has cracks just like Unbreakable's did ... and if you put them side by side, the cracks seem to line up. 

22. District 9

Watch the final shots of Wikus' mourning wife, and you'll see something taped to the mirror. Those are sonograms. She's pregnant. This gives Wikus even more motivation to want to return to his old life -- though if it's going to be at least three years like Christopher implies, at least he'll miss the terrible twos. 

23. Evil Dead

All the movies in the series use a 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, director Sam Raimi's car. Not such a big deal, but the car also appears in the remake decades later. And as Uncle Ben's car in all three Spider-Man movies. And in Drag Me to Hell, Crimewave, A Simple Plan, The Gift ...

24. Serenity 

Serenity repeatedly references The Tempest. The planet is named Miranda, like the Tempest character, and "C57D" is written on a ship -- the same designation as a ship from Forbidden Planet, based on The Tempest. Also, The Tempest originated the phrase "brave new world," and the experiments from Serenity are a lot like Brave New World. 

25. Baby Driver 

While he's flipping channels, Baby sees a bullfight, in which the matador "must try to end this on foot." Jon Hamm's character is likened to a bull ("when he sees red," warns another character), so to beat him, Baby naturally has to leave his car, ending it on foot. 

26. The Ring

After the scene where the horse jumps off the ferry, the movie briefly flashes you with a shot of the ring from the movie's haunted tape. It may be too quick to notice, but that means you saw the tape and are now fated to die, sorry. 

27. Logan

28. The Usual Suspects

Turkish audiences probably weren't very impressed with this film's twist. Of course, Verbal Kint and Soze are the same person -- "Soze" is Turkish for "verbal." 

29. The Silence Of The Lambs

We first see Hannibal Lecter having drawn "the Belvedere as seen from the Duomo" in Florence. The rest of the movie involves tracking down a serial killer, who turns out to be in ... Belvedere, Ohio. Did the doctor have the whole thing solved right from the start? 

30. Raiders Of The Lost Ark 

At the end of the movie, Indy and Marion escape divine fury by closing their eyes. This was hinted at right at the start, when Professor Jones' lecture about spirituality is interrupted by a student closing her eyes (to reveal a flirty message written on her eyelids).

31. Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

Some people were surprised and angry by the appearance of aliens (or, er, "transdimentional beings") in this movie. But they should have been prepared. Look carefully, and there's an alien right on the movie poster. 

32. Halloween 

Back in the original Halloween, John Carpenter told Jamie Lee Curtis to improvise a song, so she made up a couple lines. For the 2018 movie, 40 years later, they got a real band to record a full-length version of the song, "Close To Me."

33. Se7en

Kevin Spacey's character calls himself John Doe because he wants to stay anonymous. But "John Doe" is what police call unidentified bodies, more than anonymous criminals. We should have known from the start that John planned to die. 

34. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

35. Kill Bill

You hopefully know The Bride's jumpsuit is an homage to Bruce Lee. But what about the kimono worn by Lucy Liu's character? That comes from the 1973 Japanese film that inspired Kill Bill, Lady Snowblood. It's a non-chronological story about a woman taking revenge on three people. 

36. Django Unchained

A bunch of Easter eggs connect characters in Tarantino films, but here's one connecting them with an outside character. Broomhilda's full name is Broomhilda von Shaft. She's an ancestor of John Shaft. Tarantino confirmed this in an interview. 

37. Inglourious Basterds

Look close at Brad Pitt's character, and you'll see rope marks on his neck. He once narrowly escaped being lynched. This is mentioned explicitly in the script, which also says the scar will "never once be mentioned." 

38. It Follows 

This movie's demon, transmitted by sex, seems to clearly symbolize STDs. But look carefully, and a quick photo early on reveals that the monster's final form is that of the main character's father. Given that it also impersonates a character's mother, maybe it instead symbolizes parenthood?

39. Friday The 13th 

If you haven't seen the original, you might be surprised to learn that Friday The 13th was actually about a mother who becomes a serial killer. According to composer Henry Manfredini, the score foreshadows this. It goes "Ki Ki Ki Ma Ma Ma" -- meaning, "kill, kill, kill, ma, ma, ma."

40. The Matrix

It's ridiculous how many villains are named Cypher, which is a variation on "Lucifer." There's Gravity Falls, Angel Heart, Casino Royale ... the moment you met Cypher in The Matrix, you should have known he was a bad guy. 

41. Black Swan  

42. Toy Story 

This series is full of references to The Shining. This includes the carpet from the Overlook Hotel popping up and the number "237" (the Shining's especially haunted room) appearing again and again. The jury's out on what any of this means, other than the director being a big Shining fan. 

43. The Shining

The Shining itself has a repeated number: 42. It's on Danny's shirt and Dick's license plate, Summer of '42 plays on a TV, and there are 42 cars in a parking lot. There's no clear meaning here. It could be a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, or maybe we're supposed to be creeped out by any number repeating, regardless of which one. 

44. 2001: A Space Odyssey 

HAL 9000 singing "Daisy Bell" is so famous that plenty of later appearances of the song in pop culture are a shout-out to 2001. People today have no idea that it was a reference to a real-life singing computer: a 1961 IBM, whose singing was hailed as a step in computers turning human. 

45. The Blues Brothers

The script for 2001: A Space Odyssey featured a line that didn't make it into the final movie: "See you next Wednesday." John Landis liked this completely unremarkable line so much that he turned it into a running gag, sticking it in The Blues Brothers and a dozen other of his films. 

46. Batman & Robin 

Batman & Robin features a gang modeled after the one from A Clockwork Orange. Which makes sense -- at least it's not, say, a gang based on Kubrick's period film Barry Lyndon. Wait, no: Batman & Robin has a gang based on Barry Lyndon too. 

47. A Quiet Place

When the aliens approach, the lights flicker, and in the final scene, their arrival scrambles the TV. Why? Because they have electromagnetic powers, of course, explaining how they defeated the militaries of the world. 

48. It 

49. A Star Is Born 

If you were lucky enough to watch the recent A Star Is Born without having been clued to the story's ending by any of the previous versions of the film, you still might have got a hint about the ending early on. When we first see Jackson, who's doomed to kill himself, he's silhouetted against a billboard filled with nooses. 

50. Knives Out

This dead man in Knives Out is named Harlan Thrombey. This is a reference to the book Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? -- which isn't some groundbreaking detective novel but a Choose Your Own Adventure Book for kids. 

51. Memento

Leonard tells of Sammy, another amnesiac, a man who accidentally killed his wife. But watch carefully, and for just a frame, Sammy's face is replaced with Leonard's. This foreshadows the movie's twist: This part of the story is actually about Leonard himself. His wife wasn't murdered -- Lenny killed her by mistake. 

52. Inception

Inception features the song "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" by Edith Piaf and also its own score with a very memorable repeated throbbing tone. This tone is actually the Piaf song slowed down. Which makes sense because the dreaming characters who hear it are sensing a slowed-down version of the real world. 

53. The Dark Knight

In the opening scene, Joker is wearing a Joker mask over his usual Joker face. This is a subtle nod to the fact that he is the Joker. ... But seriously, that's not just any clown mask. They modeled it on the Pagliacci face Cesar Romero wore in his first Batman episode, Joker's first-ever live-action appearance. 

54. The Dark Knight Rises

Hear that chanting that accompanies Bane's scenes, which ends up being a bunch of prisoners urging Bruce to "rise?" Hans Zimmer made it by getting countless Batman fans to submit recordings of themselves doing the chant online. 

55. Gone Girl