Wes Craven got the best revenge against his childhood bully.
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00:00Usually in movies, when you're looking out for Easter eggs, you're looking for nice little
00:03winks and nods to other films. Directors love to put in little credits or references to other
00:09influential things or people from their lives, and I think that's quite nice. It's a nice thing to
00:13look out for. But Easter eggs aren't always done in good faith. They can also be used to poke fun
00:19at people that get on the wrong side of the filmmaker. So, I'm Amy from WhatCulture,
00:23and here are the 10 most spiteful horror movie Easter eggs.
00:2710. F*** you, Lucky Charms, in Leprechaun
00:31Leprechaun writer-director Mark Jones was inspired to create a horror movie centered around an evil,
00:36vengeful leprechaun by watching the iconic commercials for the beloved breakfast cereal
00:41Lucky Charms. Hilariously, the film also takes a number of cracks at Lucky Charms' expense,
00:45apparently as a result of the cereal's parent company, General Mills, refusing to partner with
00:50the movie in a mutually beneficial product placement opportunity. The first jab occurs when the
00:54leprechaun hungrily raids some cupboards and comes across a box of Lucky Clovers,
00:58but after eating just one mouthful, he spits them out, their taste apparently not quite to his liking.
01:04However, the more pointed, vitriolic Easter egg comes right at the film's end,
01:07when young Alex uses his slingshot to defeat the leprechaun,
01:11but not before legendarily shouting,
01:13F*** you, Lucky Charms. You can't really blame a breakfast cereal conglomerate for not wanting to
01:18get involved with a daft, low-budget horror movie, and ultimately, the film is all the better for
01:23including these thinly-veiled jabs. 9. Taking a bite out of the competition
01:28Jaws 2
01:29Early on in Jaws 2, an orca's brutalized carcass washes up on Amity Island Beach,
01:34which Chief Martin Brody believes is the result of a shark attack. Whilst at face value,
01:38this may seem like a typical plot point for a shark movie, it was actually a sly thumbing of
01:42the nose at the film Orca the Killer Whale, a shameless Jaws ripoff that was released just
01:47two years after the original Jaws. Unsurprisingly, it failed to find the same success.
01:52Not content to merely imitate Jaws though, Orca the Killer Whale also arrogantly lampooned
01:57Spielberg's film by featuring a sequence in which an orca slaughtered a great white shark,
02:02in effect implying that Orca's titular creature was a major upgrade from Jaws' own great white.
02:07And so, as great whites don't generally attack Orcas in the wild,
02:10it's clear that Jaws 2 was doing this on purpose. They were dumping an orca's
02:14chewed-up corpse on the beach as a clapback to Universal. And as moviegoers, we have to applaud
02:19them for it. 8. Dead Things Don't Run
02:22Diary of the Dead
02:24Whilst it's absolutely fair to say that George A. Romero's better filmmaking days were long
02:28behind him when he made 2007's found-footage zombie movie, Diary of the Dead, the director
02:33nevertheless decided to make fun of the tendency for the undead to move fast in modern zombie movies.
02:38In one of the film's opening scenes, filmmaker Jason is shooting a horror film and tells his
02:43undead cast member that he's moving too fast, exclaiming,
02:46Dead Things Don't Run! If you run that fast, your ankles are going to snap off.
02:50Jason insists that the actor shamble instead, and there are numerous other sly references to the
02:55running zombies popularized not only by the remakes of Romero's own Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead,
03:00but also films like 28 Days Later. If there was somehow any doubt about Romero's intent here,
03:05he confirmed as much in an interview with Vulture. He said, quote,
03:09I took a big swipe at fast zombies in this film. There's a running gag in the movie that dead things
03:14don't move fast. Partially it's a matter of taste. In the original Halloween, Michael Myers never ran,
03:19he just sort of calmly walked across the lawn or across the room. To me, he says, that's scarier,
03:24this inexorable thing coming at you and you can't figure out how to stop it. Aside from that,
03:29I do have rules in my head of what's logical and what's not, and I don't think zombies can run.
03:34Their ankles would snap, end quote. People might find it a little bit pretentious,
03:38but I guess logically he is right. 7. No thanks whatsoever. Scream.
03:45In a rare case of an Easter egg being concealed in the film's closing credits, Wes Craven's masterful
03:50Scream features a very peculiar note near the end of the credits of the usual,
03:54the filmmakers wish to thank dedications. A notice reads, no thanks whatsoever to the Santa Rosa City
04:00School District Governing Board, and this is due to the board meddling in production and forcing
04:04planned location shoots to be changed just shortly before filming. Originally, the production had
04:09received verbal permission from Santa Rosa High School's principal to film Scream on its grounds,
04:14but once the school district governing board heard about it, they stonewalled filming altogether.
04:18With pressure subsequently mounting from locals none too pleased about a slasher film being shot in
04:23their backyard, Craven and company had no choice but to up sticks and move shooting to the nearby
04:28Sonoma Community Center. But not content to simply just let the matter rest, Craven immortalized the
04:33governing board's refusal to play ball by disparaging them in the end credits of this movie.
04:37On balance of circumstances, Wes won.
04:406. Trolling Twilight Fans
04:43Fright Night 2011
04:442011's surprisingly good remake of the 1985 cult classic vampire film Fright Night released in the
04:50midst of the Twilight phenomenon, and being as self-aware comedy horror as it was, it gleefully
04:56took the opportunity to throw some shade at the very uncool vampire franchise. Early on in the film,
05:01there's a straight-up joke about Twilight when the protagonist, Charlie, tells his pal Ed,
05:06you read too much Twilight, a suggestion which greatly offends Ed. But there is a far more
05:11subtle allusion to one of the first Twilight movie's more infamous scenes, about halfway through
05:15Fright Night, when vampire Jerry rolls an apple off his kitchen worktop and catches it whilst Charlie
05:21is sneaking around the house. Though Jerry also has a fondness for apples in the original Fright Night,
05:25this is actually a specific nod to an oft-ridiculed scene from Twilight. In the scene in question,
05:30Bella drops her apple in the school cafeteria,
05:33only for her vampiric crush Edward to catch it with his foot and bounce it back up into his hands.
05:38All jokes aside, if someone managed to run across the cafeteria in time to catch your apple and bounce
05:42it back up, you can't say you wouldn't be impressed.
05:465. The edited for TV jacket
05:48Return of the Living Dead
05:50Cult classic horror comedy, Return of the Living Dead, certainly holds nothing back in the gore,
05:55nudity and profanity department. Enough that you have to wonder why any TV network would even bother
06:00making an edited-for-content version. Yet, it's extremely bizarrely common in the US for R-rated
06:06movies to get sanitized TV edits, typically either using alternate takes shot specifically for that
06:11purpose, or more hilariously, getting soundalikes to redub any offending dialogue. In the case of
06:16Return of the Living Dead, one of the more prominent edits involved changing the lettering
06:21on the back of Freddy's jacket. In the theatrical version of the film, the text reads,
06:24F*** You! But these scenes were reshot for TV with a message that could be enjoyed by all the family.
06:30Seemingly not thrilled about the idea of having to shoot a cleaned-up alternate version, though,
06:34the filmmakers had a second jacket made with the phrase,
06:37television version written on the back, poking fun at the very idea of such a graphically
06:42violent and sexual film being edited for TV.
06:454. Stephen King's Endings Always Suck
06:48IT Chapter 2
06:50There's a running gag in IT Chapter 2 that people tell author-protagonist Bill that the
06:54ending to his book sucked, which, to anyone familiar with Stephen King's own novels,
06:58is sure to feel loaded with meaning. King, despite his enormous success as a writer,
07:03has frequently been criticized for the unsatisfying endings to his stories,
07:07including the ending to IT itself. This recurring joke is a frustrated jab at King's tendency to lose
07:13his way in the final stretch, though to be completely fair on both the movie and King,
07:18the author seems to take it in his stride, as he even shows up for a brief cameo in the movie where
07:22he himself mocks Bill for the book's ending. He is a good sport for taking part, but I do wonder
07:27if he felt a slight jab in his heart thinking about all the fans that hated the ends of his books.
07:333. Throwing Shade At Jaws
07:36The Giant Spider Invasion
07:38You'd think that any movie called The Giant Spider Invasion wouldn't have the gall, the guts,
07:42or the gumption to throw anything at Jaws, never mind obvious shade. But if nothing else,
07:47it shows that really, filmmakers have the audacity. Released just four months after Jaws,
07:52The Giant Spider Invasion was a sci-fi horror movie about, yep, you guessed it,
07:56gigantic spiders terrorizing a Wisconsin town. Probably the most exciting thing to ever happen
08:02in Wisconsin. Originally, the film spiders were actually going to be more modestly sized,
08:06at about 10 feet tall each. But when the producers got wind of Steven Spielberg's Jaws going into
08:11production, they insisted that the spiders would have to be bigger in order to compete at the box office.
08:16A tongue-in-cheek reference to this is made in the movie's own climax, when Sheriff Jones tells
08:20another character that the spiders make the shark from Jaws look like a goldfish,
08:24to which the other character agrees. Trying to compete with Jaws is one thing,
08:28but actively trying to denigrate it in the movie itself? Are you kidding me? Unsurprisingly,
08:33it did little harm to Jaws' reputation, and likely only reminded audiences that they could be out there
08:38watching a much better film. Wes Craven named Freddy Krueger after his childhood bully.
08:44A Nightmare on Elm Street
08:46A Nightmare on Elm Street's iconic antagonist Freddy Krueger is basically drawn from a grab
08:51bag of filmmaker Wes Craven's most traumatic formative experiences. In fact, even the antagonist's name
08:57was inspired by a real-life terror. As much as the name Freddy Krueger might sound made up and impossible
09:03to be a real person's name by now, you have to keep in mind that that's just because of how familiar
09:07we are with it in its context. It is actually, truly, the name of a bully who tormented Craven
09:12in his childhood, albeit that kid went by Fred, dropping the Y. Given that Krueger himself is a
09:18bully and a tormentor, it's certainly a fitting designation for someone who evidently brought
09:22Craven so much misery in his younger years. In fact, this isn't even the only one of Craven's films
09:27where this guy is referenced. In The Last House on the Left, released a decade later, the rapist and
09:32serial killer played by David A. Hess is named Krug. If nothing else, this just serves to disprove the
09:37whole thing of, oh, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Any kind
09:42of playground bullying can stick with you for years, for the rest of your life, in fact. And clearly,
09:46this one guy had such an impact on Craven that he chose to immortalize him as the bad guy forever.
09:521. Retconning Laurie's Past
09:54Halloween 2018
09:562018's Halloween manages the mostly graceful feat of serving as a direct sequel to the original 1978
10:02movie, all whilst kicking all previous sequels to the curb. Yet its best bit of table-clearing
10:07is a throwaway line of dialogue that's easily missed if you're not totally paying attention.
10:12In one of the film's establishing scenes, Alison is talking to her friends about her grandmother
10:16Laurie, and one of them asks her about the killer Michael Myers being Laurie's brother.
10:20Alison quickly replies that this isn't true, saying,
10:23quote, that's just a bit that some people made up. To make them feel better, I think,
10:27end quote. This single, ten-second dialogue exchange does away with one of the most divisive
10:32aspects of 1981's Halloween II, which reveals Michael and Laurie to be siblings,
10:37a fact that went on to define the original run of sequels and the bad way they went.
10:41In a matter of just seconds, Halloween 2018 wipes that ill-advised plot twist off the map,
10:46and returns to the much scarier notion of Michael simply being an unstoppable merchant of death,
10:51motivated only by the need to kill. By getting this retcon out of the way so quickly,
10:56director David Gordon Green clearly didn't want fans to think about it too much, or at all.
11:01It was certainly a worthwhile retcon, but even in those precious few seconds,
11:05you can feel Green's disgust for that fateful plot twist.
11:08And with that, we've reached the end of this
11:10list of the 10 most spiteful horror movie easter eggs. I'm sure there's more petty,
11:14spiteful people out there who've gone on to make movies, so let us know in the comments below what
11:18ones you would have included on this list. And remember to check out WhatCulture.com for
11:22more lists and articles like this every single day. As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture,
11:27and I'll catch you next time.