The 16 Most Striking Pop Culture References and Easter Eggs in Jordan Peele's Us

The very first scene in the film is of an old-school TV playing an ad for the 1986 event Hands Across America. Next to the TV are a few shelves holding VHS tapes, and The Goonies is one of them. On top of that, a monologue at the end of the film by Red, Adelaide's evil doppelganger, includes the phrase "It's our time," which is a reference to Mikey's (Sean Astin) wistful speech in the 1985 film.

The Goonies isn't the only tape on the shelf in the opening scene — a copy of C.H.U.D. is also there. If you haven't seen it, the 1985 horror/sci-fi flick from director Douglas Cheek imagines what would happen if a bunch of murderous, humanoid monsters began pouring out of the sewers under New York City to seek revenge on humans. (The title of the film stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, FYI.)

If you've seen Us, then hopefully you should understand why Peele decided to include a nod to a film about creatures rising up from below to take over. But the reference actually goes even deeper: Peele has a direct connection to the horror movie.

"Fun fact: My first girlfriend's father directed C.H.U.D., when I was, like, 11 or 12 or something like that," he said in an interview with Polygon. "Her father was Douglas Cheek. So that was my introduction to C.H.U.D. So there's a little personal thing for me."

Throughout the first half of the film Jason Wilson (Evan Alex) wears a t-shirt with the toothy shark from the Jaws movie poster printed on the front. The t-shirt makes a lot of sense a few scenes into the movie, when Jason briefly wanders off while his family is hanging out at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz.

The plastic mask that Jason wears is a take on Chewbacca's likeness in the Star Wars films, what with the slicked-back hair and white fangs. Is there any deeper meaning associated with it? Eh . . . maybe. If you really want to get deep with it, perhaps you could make a case that Chewbacca has trouble communicating with people outside his immediate circle, like Jason. (But really, it's probably just because Jason is a little kid who likes Star Wars.)

In one of Us's first scenes, we see the childhood version of Adelaide (played by Madison Curry) on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with her mother and father. Not only does The Lost Boys take place in Santa Cruz, but its opening scene was filmed at the same boardwalk, and includes a sequence of the characters on the carousel. Adelaide's mother makes reference to this part of the 1987 vampire film when she says, "You know they're shooting a movie over there by the carousel."

Peele is a noted fan of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, to the point that he recreated one of the outfits that deranged writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) wears in the film during a press event for Us. But that's not the only way he pays homage to the film: there are also some very, very creepy twins in the mix! Lindsey and Becca (actresses Noelle and Cali Sheldon) are the twin teen daughters of Wilson family friends Kitty and Josh, and suffer a brutal end when they're stabbed to death by their doppelgangers in gory fashion. In short? Blood + twins = nightmares.

When little Adelaide is on the boardwalk with her parents, her father wins her a shirt at an arcade attraction that has images from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video all over it. Her mom remarks that Adelaide better not "get any nightmares" from the shirt, not realising that the true terror that would befall her daughter was lurking just under the boardwalk.

As I mentioned earlier, the opening scene takes place in 1986 and features a television commercial for Hands Across America. It was a real charity event held in order to raise awareness about famine in Africa and homelessness in the US, involving 6.5 million people linking hands on Sunday, May 25, 1986 to form a human chain. The benefit ended up raising $34 million, but less than half of that money went to the cause due to large promotional costs.

So, why does Peele include Hands Across America so heavily in his film? The event is essentially acts as an allegoric backbone for the presence of the evil doubles that takes up the back half of Us. Not only is the charity event likely one of the last things young Adelaide remembers before she's cruelly doomed to the world of the Tethereds underground, with Red assuming her spot up above, but it's also a metaphor for how often people in the upper and middle class turn a blind eye to the poor who struggle with the impossibility of rising above their station.

When Red and her Tethered family descend upon Adelaide's home the first night of their holiday, the movie swerves into the home invasion thriller genre. Seeing the evil doppelgangers terrorize both the Wilsons, as well as Josh and Kitty's family, is tense and horrifying in a myriad of ways, and I couldn't help but be reminded of the demented killers in Funny Games (both the 1997 and 2007 versions).

In both versions of the film, two initially unassuming men show up at the lakeside holiday home of a family one evening and proceed to take them hostage and torture them throughout the night. At one point someone's leg is shattered with a golf club.

Coincidentally, when Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) enters Josh and Kitty's home to try to save her mother — who is dragged inside and held hostage by Kitty's Tether — her weapon of choice is a golf club. She uses it to beat one of the twin's evil doppelgangers to death, and also attacks Kitty's double with it.

What is it with horror movies and small children singing creepy, slowed-down lullabies? Us's take on the trope comes in the form of young Adelaide whistling "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" as she nervously makes her way through the hall of mirrors attraction at the boardwalk. At first it seems like her voice is echoing off the glass that surrounds her, but becomes clear that, no — someone else is singing an identical version of the tune somewhere in the room with her.

Later on in the film, we discover that Red and Adelaide actually originated as their opposites — the little girl living a normal life with her parents was knocked out and dragged down to the world of the Tethered underneath the hall of mirrors the night of her birthday by little Red, who switched places with her in the world above, with her parents none the wiser. After a bloody showdown between adult Adelaide and Red, the latter is stabbed and uses her last breaths to whistle the song one last time.

Cue the chills.

This specific Bible verse appears twice in Us: little Adelaide passes a homeless man on the boardwalk holding up a cardboard sign with the verse, and later during the Tethered uprising, his doppelganger carves "11:11" into his own forehead. Generally, the verse refers to God's warning to the Jews that he'll turn his back on them if they continue to worship false idols.

Per the King James version of the Bible, it reads: "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."

As for why Peele included it, the verse could be seen as a warning from the Tethered that they were about to "bring evil upon" the people above ground. "11:11" pops up again at other points in the film, though, like when Jason points out the hour to Adelaide on a clock in his bedroom. The numbers are also four of the same, which could be yet another emphasis on the importance of duplicates in Us.