10 Easter Eggs You Might Have Missed In 2018’s Halloween

Halloween has one of the most convoluted and, let's face it, less-than-stellar histories of any movie franchise but still, many of us are diehard fans. You just have to look at how well Blumhouse's new sequel is doing at the box office to see how audiences never get tired of Michael Myers and his eternal hunt for Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode. Of course, the big hook for the latest movie is that it does away with nearly all of that complicated backstory and ignores every sequel in the franchise, picking up 40 years after the events of the original film. However, director David Gordon Green and screenwriters Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley have still made sure to stuff the movie full of references to both the first entry in the saga and even those that it's wiped from continuity. And so, on that note, here are 10 easter eggs that you might've missed from the new Halloween. Obviously, we'll be diving into full spoiler territory here, so you might want to bookmark this page and come back once you've caught up with the horror hit of the year if you haven't seen it already. "I Saw Him... The Shape" Halloween fans will know that, in the 1978 movie, Michael Myers is not credited as such in the cast list but is referred to as "The Shape." This was because he was referred to by this in the script from John Carpenter and Debra Hill - the reason being that he was always seen in silhouette or in shadows. However, in the movie itself the credit comes across as strange, as he's never called that name on-screen. Well, not until 2018's Halloween, that is. When Laurie crashes Allyson's celebratory dinner, she begins talking about her recent experience watching Michael be moved from the Smith's Grove institution. "I saw him," she tells her family, breaking down. "I saw The Shape." Sure enough, the resurrection of this phrase is followed through into the end credits when the killer is once again listed under that name. The New Loomis Donald Pleasence passed away in 1995, but the new Halloween still found a way to honor his iconic character of Dr. Loomis through the presence of Dr. Sartain, Michael's new psychiatrist. It's established early on that he was a student of Loomis'. When Laurie meets him for the first time, she even lampshades his stand-in role by calling him "the new Loomis." The film then cleverly plays with our expectations for this sort of character when Sartain's darker intentions are revealed later in the movie. Of course, Loomis himself also makes a vocal cameo here. When the British podcasters listen to his old recordings, Loomis can be heard arguing for Michael to be executed as he believes the killer's pure evil. Though the words echo a similar speech the doctor made in the original, this was new material that was actually read by a pretty spot-on Donald Pleasence impersonator. Hiding Under A Bedsheet Probably Myers' most memorable kills from the first movie are his murders of the unfortunate babysitter Lynda and her boyfriend Bob. After snuffing out Bob by pinning him to the wall with a knife, Michael displays a bit of uncharacteristic humor when he dons a bed sheet ghost costume to fool Lynda into thinking he's Bob... before killing her, too. The deaths of Vicky and Dave - another unfortunate babysitter and her boyfriend - echo the demise of Lynda and Bob, but with a few twists. First, their deaths are switched around. Vicky dies first before Dave goes to investigate and meets the same fate. Their actual deaths occur off-screen, but when Sheriff Hawkins discovers their corpses, he finds Dave pinned to the wall (like Bob) and Vicky left under a bed sheet ghost costume. Clearly, Michael loves that ghoulish joke for some reason. Speaking of Lynda, the actress who played her - P.J. Soules - makes a vocal cameo appearance in the new film when she's heard as the voice of Allyson's teacher in one scene. The Babysitter Murders Once Sheriff Hawkins investigates the bus crash, he realizes that one of the escaped institution inmates is Michael Myers. To jog his colleague Barker's memory of the name, he says "The Babysitter Murders, 1978." Clearly, this was the name given to the incident on Halloween night that year. It's also a neat nod to the original working title of the first film. Producer Irwin Yablans initially came up with the concept for the 1978 movie, pitching the idea to John Carpenter as The Babysitter Murders. He later changed the name of the production after he realized that the much snappier title of Halloween had miraculously never been used by another film. "The thing that baffled me,” he later told the Times, “is that in 75 years of moviemaking, nobody had ever used the title Halloween for a picture.” Callbacks To Sequels Past Halloween 2018 might disregard all previous sequels in the franchise from continuity, but there are still many homages and references to a smattering of them that shows us these often under-loved films haven't been wholly forgotten. First off, as we'd noticed from the trailers, there's a scene that's a near replication of a moment from Halloween II. In this film, Michael's in need of a weapon and so borrows a butcher's knife from the kitchen of a woman making a sandwich while wearing a red robe. The same thing happens in the first sequel, except that the woman lives to tell the tale. Similarly, the scene in which Michael murders British podcaster Dana in a grotty public restroom brings to mind a moment from Halloween: H20, in which a mother and her daughter hide in the cubicles from The Shape. Much like its homage to Halloween II, though, the movie ups the gore from the original as the mother and her kid survived, unlike Dana. There are also some much subtler callbacks to both Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Halloween: Resurrection. For instance, some kids are seen trick-r-treating in jack'o'lantern, skull and witch masks that closely resemble the creepy ones from the threequel. Also, while refilling his car at the gas station, Aaron is parked nearby a truck which is labelled "The Resurrection Church." Lonnie Elam and Son Allyson's (cheating) boyfriend is Cameron Elam and while at dinner with her family, it comes out that his father's Lonnie Elam, who used to hang around with Allyson's dad Ray back in their teenage years. What we hear about the rascals makes sense with the kind of kid Lonnie was when we first met him back in 1978's Halloween. Lonnie was one of the boys who bullied young Tommy Doyle by telling him the boogeyman was coming to get him - little did they know that they were right about that. In a particularly memorable scene, his pals dare Lonnie to approach the haunted Myers house, though Dr. Loomis scares him away in order to keep him safe. Basically, Lonnie wasn't the nicest kid, and it seems his son's inherited something of his ways, as he kisses another girl at the Halloween party behind Allyson's back. And dunks her phone in custard. Real mature, Cameron. The Return Of Nick Castle For the most part, Michael Myers is portrayed by James Jude Courtney in 2018's Halloween - who's told us that co-star Jamie Lee Curtis was so in the zone on set that he never properly spoke to her. However, director David Gordon Green couldn't resist bringing back the original Myers actor, Nick Castle, for a few key moments of his sequel. For one, those early scenes in which we see side shots or blurred looks at Michael's bare face, before he's got his mask back, are showing us Castle's visage. At 75, the actor was unable to carry out the more physically demanding stuff and that's why Courtney was brought in for the remainder of the movie. However, he did get to don the mask again for one particularly memorable moment. When Laurie looks up at a window at one point, she sees Michael stop and stare back at her, tilting his head in that creepy way that he did in the first movie. Castle said he was encouraged to do this by Green as a callback to his original performance. Judith Myers And Her Gravestone Podcasters Aaron and Dana are shown around a cemetery early on in the movie. Specifically, they go to visit the grave of Judith Myers. As fans will know, Judith is Michael's first kill, as at the age of six, he murdered his teenage sister in her bedroom on Halloween night. This scene's replayed during the movie, too, with the footage directly lifted from the opening scene of the original. Fans might also remember that Judith's gravestone went missing the night Michael escaped in 1978. It eventually turned up by the corpse of aforementioned Lynda in a sick tableau set up by the killer. Clearly, the stone was restored after this incident, as it's there in its right place when Aaron and Dana visit. It's also an exact match to the one from the earlier film. Mirroring Michael All these easter eggs are great, but there's a running thread of callbacks to the 1978 movie that serves more of a purpose than simply paying homage. Notably, several scenes feature Curtis' Laurie Strode replicating moments that included Michael Myers in the original. First of all, the scene in which Allyson is in her classroom and is sitting at the back right of the room is a direct match for a moment which saw Laurie in the same spot in the first Halloween. Only Laurie looked outside the window and saw Myers. When Allyson looks outside, she sees her grandmother. Fast forward to the big climax and Laurie's searching for Michael, armed and ready to kill him, through her house. For one tense moment, she believes he's hiding in the closet, which looks near identical to the one she hid in in the famous third art of the first film. Except now, the scene casts Laurie as the predator and Michael as her prey. This switcheroo is most obvious in the shocking moment when Michael throws Laurie off the balcony. He looks at her prone form on the ground, looks away for a second and then looks back and she's nowhere to be seen - complete with an ominous sting on the score. This bit of business is lifted wholesale from the memorable ending of Halloween '78 where Michael's the one to disappear. The new Halloween's all about the long-term effects of trauma and one of the outcomes Dr. Sartain mentions is that the torment suffered by a victim can cause them to become just like their tormentor. While Laurie doesn't go that far, the film certainly encourages us to think of her changing her dynamic with Michael. The Post-Credits Scene Breath Finally, in this age of Marvel movies, what everyone wants to know before they sit down to watch a film is does it have a post-credits scene? For Halloween, we can say that it doesn't have anything as substantial as Marvel often serves up, but there is something there that baits us for a sequel nonetheless. The final moments of the movie reveal Laurie's grand plan to trap Michael in her fortified basement and blow up her house, apparently killing him for good. And so off ride the three generations of Strode women, having the curse of their family finally lifted. Or maybe they haven't. Right at the end of the credits, one last sound's heard - one last breath that we know has to belong to Michael Myers. Meaning that the superhuman killer somehow survived his doom in the inferno and will no doubt return next Halloween in Blumhouse's planned sequel. Whether it will hark back to Halloween II as much as this movie does the first, we'll have to see, but we can't wait to find out.