Breaking Down the Many Stranger Things Season 3 References You Might Have Missed

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 3.

One of the best parts about watching a new season of Netflix’s Stranger Things — besides jumping on the ’80s nostalgia bandwagon and solving a new mystery from the Upside Down — is trying to spot all of the pop culture references that showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer slip into each episode.

As self-professed “movie fanatics,” the Duffer Brothers have been packing in the nods to quintessential ’80s flicks since the show’s very first episode. And season 3 is no different.

But while some of the references are easy to pick up on — like the group’s outing to the opening night of Day of the Dead — others, like a throwaway line from Stand By Me, elude easy notice.

Here are some of the notable movie references from the third season of Stranger Things.

Day of the Dead (1985)

Referenced in episode 1

In one of the first scenes of the season 3 premiere — after spending some quality time with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) — Mike (Finn Wolfhard) heads to Hawkins’ newest attraction, Starcourt Mall, to meet up with Will (Noah Schnapp), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) for the opening night of Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead was the third installment in director George A. Romero’s iconic Night of the Living Dead series and was described by Romero as a “tragedy about how a lack of human communication causes chaos and collapse even in this small little pie slice of society.”

This theme plays out later in Stranger Things season 3 when the three groups of Hawkins’ main players — El and her crew, the ice cream shop kids and the grown-ups — fail to communicate what they’ve learned about the Russians and the mysterious Mind Flayer monster until it’s almost too late.

WarGames (1983)

Referenced in episodes 1 and 8

The two-man rule put in place by the Russians to ensure the gate to the Upside Down can neither be open or shut without at least two people present to turn the two keys calls to mind the scene in seminal hacker flick WarGames when two soldiers must simultaneously turn two keys to launch a missile. Of course, in Stranger Things, Joyce (Winona Ryder) ultimately figures out a way around the security system.

[h/t IndieWire]

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Referenced in episodes 1 and 8

It doesn’t take long for the parallels with Fast Times to come into play. In the season’s first episode, Zac Efron lookalike Billy (Dacre Montgomery) struts by a group of eager Hawkins housewives — including Mike’s mom, Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) — at the pool in nothing but a red bathing suit as The Cars’ “Moving In Stereo” plays. The scene is a gender-flipped recreation of the iconic Fast Times dream sequence in which Phoebe Cates’ Linda Barrett emerges from the pool in a red bikini to the same song.

Later, Dustin insists that his girlfriend from Camp Know Where, Suzie, is hotter than Phoebe Cates. Of course, the rest of the group finds this claim difficult to believe. In one final nod to Cates, in the finale, Steve knocks over a cardboard cutout of her Fast Times character while interviewing for a job at Family Video.

The sailor-inspired uniform Steve is forced to wear while working at Scoops Ahoy — complete with hair-ruining hat — also brings to mind the pirate garb that Fast Times‘ Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) must sport for his job at Captain Hook Fish and Chips.

Stand By Me (1986)

Referenced in episode 1

Remember that famous scene in Stand By Me when Gordie (Wil Wheaton) tells the story about David Hogan (Andy Lindberg) — a.k.a. Lard-Ass — competing in the pie-eating contest? Well, considering the Duffer Brothers’ reverence for the work of Stephen King, it doesn’t seem coincidental that “lard-ass” is the insult Billy chooses to hurl at the boy he spots running at the pool while on lifeguard duty.

The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987) and Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness (1993)

Referenced in episodes 1 and 7

When Nancy wakes up panicked that she’s going to be late for work at the Hawkins Gazette, there’s an Evil Dead poster hanging on the wall in Jonathan’s room.

The show throws in another reference to director Sam Raimi’s franchise of cult horror classics in the final scene of the premiere when Billy is dragged through the old steel works by an unseen force before grabbing onto a doorframe for dear life. In the end, Billy’s efforts are futile and he disappears screaming into the darkness just like Evil Dead‘s Ash (Bruce Campbell) is sucked through the portal in Army of Darkness.

Later in the season, the Mind Flayer’s attack on Hopper’s (David Harbour) cabin evokes the secluded cabin setting of Evil Dead while the way in which the severed limb of the Mind Flayer crawls away after Lucas chops it off with an ax is a dead ringer for how Ash’s evil hand scurries off in Evil Dead II.

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Referenced in episodes 1 and 8

When Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) radios to his friends that he’s back in walkie talkie range while returning from Camp Know Where, he checks in as Gold Leader. This seems like it could only be a reference to the callsign of Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi.

Fast-forward to the scene in the finale when Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke) are interviewing for jobs at Family Video and Steve names the “one with the teddy bears” — a.k.a. Ewoks — as his favorite Star Wars movie for another Duffer nod to Return.

Gremlins (1984)

Referenced in episodes 1 and 7

The electric hammer invention that Dustin brings home from Camp Know Where sure looks a lot like the hammer device that inventor Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) whips up in Gremlins. A stuffed Gremlin is also one of the prizes up for grabs at Hawkins’ Fourth of July carnival.

[h/t IndieWire]

The Fly (1986)

Referenced in episodes 1, 2 and 4

Although the Duffers appear to pay homage to several of “body horror” master David Cronenberg’s movies in season 3, the one that seems to have influenced them the most is The Fly. In today’s world, to “Cronenberg” something means to turn it into a grotesque being that resembles one of the mutilated creatures from the director’s movies. So when Hawkins’ rats begin horrifically transforming into writhing masses of sentient blood and guts in episode 1, it seems likely that the town has a Cronenberg situation on its hands.

But it’s the closing minutes of episode 4, when both Billy and Mrs. Driscoll began exhibiting the physical effects of the Mind Flayer inhabiting their bodies, that truly recall Dr. Seth Brundle’s (Jeff Goldblum) gruesome transformation into a man-fly hybrid in Cronenberg’s 1986 movie inspired by George Langelaan’s 1957 short story.

Billy’s pleas for Max to help him after the group traps him in the sauna also sound eerily similar to Brundle’s when he’s realizing that his science experiment has gone horribly wrong.

Rabid (1977)

Referenced in episodes 1, 2, 3 and 4

Billy’s car-crash-turned-body-invasion storyline definitely sports similarities to the character arc of Rose (Marilyn Chambers) in Cronenberg’s Rabid. Just as Billy spreads the Mind Flayer infection throughout Hawkins, after a motorcycle crash leads to Rose developing a taste for blood, she becomes patient zero for a zombie outbreak that makes people vulnerable to attacks by those closest to them.

The Dead Zone (1983)

Referenced in episode 3

Cronenberg rears his head once again when El begins using her powers to spy on Billy and finds him about to feed Heather (Francesca Reale) to the Mind Flayer. She later tunes into Heather’s headspace and sees her submerged in Billy’s ice-filled bathtub begging for help before she’s sucked away into the watery depths. Although El is seeing what’s currently happening rather than the future, these visions share many similarities with the premonitions that Johnny (Christopher Walken) begins having after emerging from his coma in The Dead Zone. Both characters sense that others are in danger by using their respective powers and then try to help them.

Eleven and Max discovering Billy’s bloodied bathroom is also reminiscent of the Dead Zone scene in which Johnny and Sheriff Bannerman (Tom Skerritt) find Frank’s (Nicholas Campbell) bloodied body in the bathtub.

Alien (1979)

Referenced in episodes 2 and 4

If you’ve seen Ridley Scott’s space horror classic Alien, then you’ve probably noticed that the way in which the Mind Flayer monster latches onto people’s faces to take over their bodies is extremely similar to the Xenomorph’s terrifying facehugger attack method in that movie.

Jaws (1975)

Referenced in episode 2

Cary Elwes’ corrupt Mayor Larry Kline and his willingness to risk the lives of Hawkins’ citizens for economic gain definitely seems to play off of Murray Hamilton’s Mayor Larry Vaughn and his unwillingness to close Amity Island’s beaches in Jaws. Not to mention that the Fourth of July setting and Hopper’s drunken assertion, “I can do anything I want. I’m the chief of police,” are both pulled directly from Steven Spielberg’s man vs. shark blockbuster.

As the star of The Princess Bride, Elwes is also an ’80s icon in his own right.

[h/t IndieWire]

The Karate Kid (1984)

Referenced in episodes 3 and 5

Who else happens to be featured in the issue of SuperTeen magazine that El is reading at the beginning of episode 3 than ’80s teen heartthrob Ralph Macchio, the one and only Karate Kid. The bandana-around-the-head look that Lucas rocks beginning in episode 5 is also clearly inspired by Daniel-san’s style.

The Shining (1980)

Referenced in episodes 3, 4 and 5

The Duffer Brothers’ homage to Stephen King continues with yet another nod to The Shining. When El tries to find out what happened to Heather using her telepathic powers, the way the red door to Heather’s house materializes in her vision looks a lot like the Shining scene when blood bursts out of the elevator doors, except in reverse.

In the next episode, the moment when Billy smashes through the glass window of the sauna door and tries to attack Max with a shard of tile is reminiscent of Jack’s (Jack Nicholson) infamous door breakdown in The Shining. The Duffers even told actor Dacre Montgomery that they wanted a villain like Jack Torrance when they cast him in the role of Billy.

We get another door scene connection when a flayed Bruce (Jake Busey) punches through the window of the hospital room door in pursuit of Nancy and Jonathan, and greets them with a menacing, “Hi there,” a.k.a. the Stranger Things version of “Here’s Johnny!” The creepy way in which Bruce chases Nancy through the hospital while calling after her also brings to mind Jack’s hunt for Wendy (Shelley Duvall) in The Shining.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Referenced in episodes 4, 7 and 8

After Erica (Priah Ferguson) helps Dustin, Steve and Robin break into the storage room where the Russians are keeping their secret supplies, Steve’s removal of the mysterious test tube is extremely similar to the Jurassic Park scene in which Nedry (Wayne Knight) steals the dinosaur embryos. Not to mention that when Dustin and Erica enter the room full of test tubes, it’s pretty much interchangeable with the room in which that movie’s embryos are stored.

Erica’s journey through the air ducts also brings to mind the harrowing sequence in which Alan (Sam Neill), Ellie (Laura Dern) and the kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello) escape from the Velociraptors in a similar fashion near the end of the movie.

On top of all that, there’s that whole Mind Flayer monster-chasing-the-car scene that’s shot in much the same way as Jurassic‘s famous T-Rex chase sequence.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Referenced in episode 4

When Erica is getting ready to crawl through Starcourt Mall’s air ducts, she expresses concern that the Russians’ secret storage room will be guarded with booby traps — specifically, spikes in the wall. It seems likely that she may have gotten that idea from watching Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) nearly meet his end after getting trapped in a room with that exact pitfall in Temple of Doom. Since the second installment in the Indiana Jones trilogy came out in 1984 and season 3 takes place in the summer of 1985, it makes sense that this would be on the forefront of Erica’s mind.

The Thing (1982)

Referenced in episodes 4, 5 and 7

When El, Mike, Max, Lucas and Will are trying to come up with a plan to figure out if the Mind Flayer has taken over Billy’s body in episode 4, Mike mentions that the Mind Flayer likes the cold because it allows it to stay dormant inside its host body. Mike then suggests trapping Billy in the sauna and turning the temperature up in order to try to activate the Mind Flayer. In John Carpenter’s The Thing, MacReady (Kurt Russell) figures out that the Thing “wants to go to sleep in the cold” and wait for the rescue team that will inevitably come for their crew to reawaken it. He decides to set their base on fire to prevent that.

In episode 5, we see a poster for The Thing hanging on the wall in Mike’s basement. And in episode 6, Lucas gives a speech comparing the difference between the original 1951 Thing and Carpenter’s remake to classic Coca-Cola and the ’80s-reformulated New Coke: “The original is a classic, no question about it. But the remake…sweeter, bolder, better.”

The Mind Flayer’s ability to inhabit the bodies of the citizens of Hawkins without anyone else being any the wiser also evokes the nightmarish body-invasion talents of the Thing, while the grotesque true forms of both monsters are similar as well.

The Terminator (1984)

Referenced in episodes 5, 6, 7 and 8

The Russian assassin’s hunt for Hopper and Joyce definitely seems to nod at the Terminator’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) search for Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and Reese (Michael Biehn) in James Cameron’s ’80s sci-fi classic. Up until the moment when Hopper manages to throw the agent — who also looks similar to Schwarzenegger’s iconic character — into the key, it even kind of seems like he may be Terminator-levels of indestructible.

The Godfather (1972)

Referenced in episode 5

The Godfather came out about a decade before the Stranger Things‘ kids’ time, but some of the show’s adults were clearly influenced by it. When Hopper uses his police badge to commandeer the yellow convertible from unsuspecting 7-Eleven customer Todd, its license plate reads “TODFTHR.” There’s no mistaking this reference to the titular character in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 mafia masterpiece.

Heathers (1988)

Referenced in episode 5

Joyce, Hopper and Alexei’s (Alec Utgoff) foray into the 7-Eleven where they steal the now-infamous “TODFTHR” car probably reminded some viewers of the convenience store scene in Heathers, an ’80s movie that Winona Ryder herself starred in — especially the moment when Veronica (Ryder) tells JD (Christian Slater) that, like Alexei, she prefers cherry slushies.

Reality Bites (1994)

Referenced in episode 5

Although it’s not an ’80s movie, Reality Bites, another Winona movie with another convenience store scene, also comes to mind when Hopper, Joyce and Alexei make a snack run to the 7-Eleven.

Die Hard (1988)

Referenced in episodes 5 and 8

After managing to get the jump on the Russian assassin in the basement-turned-laboratory of the Hess house, Hopper threatens to put a bullet through his head if he doesn’t drop his gun. “You won’t do that,” the assassin responds. “You are policeman. Policemen have rules.”

This line is a nearly word-for-word callback to what one of the German terrorists tells John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Die Hard. The beginning of the two fight sequences that follow these respective conversations are almost identical as well.

Hopper’s gibe that they can invite the nice Russian guard over and “share some laughs” also echoes the famous John McClane line, “Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs,” while Murray’s journey through the ducts mirrors McClane’s own vent-crawl.

First Blood (1982)

Referenced in episode 6

Alexei tells Hopper that he reminds him of a “fat Rambo” — the machine-gun-toting Green Beret character made famous by Sylvester Stallone — after Hopper suggests that he will singlehandedly be able to get him into the underground Russian base. But as Murray translates, Alexei doesn’t even think that “thin Rambo” could get him there.

Back to the Future (1985)

Referenced in episode 7

When Dustin and Erica are in desperate need of a place to hide while they wait for Steve and Robin to come down from whatever drug the Russians injected them with, they decide to sit them down in front of a screening of Back to the Future, which is playing at the Starcourt Mall movie theater. Robin then offers a pretty succinct explanation of the cult classic’s confusing title: “He has to go back to the future because he’s in the past. So, the future is actually the present, which is his time.”

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Referenced in episodes 7 and 8

Not only does the final battle of Stranger Things season 3 take place in a mall like the zombie attack in Dawn of the Dead — the second film in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead series — but the ice cream shop gang also slides down the middle partition of an escalator just like some of the survivors in the movie do.

[h/t IndieWire]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Referenced in episode 8

Although the Lord of the Rings movies didn’t come out until the 2000s, J.R.R. Tolkien’s book trilogy was already a classic by the time the ’80s rolled around. And when the Scoop Troop squad of Steve, Robin, Dustin and Erica jump in the car to drive to Dustin’s radio tower, Dustin tells Steve to head to Weathertop, a reference to the hill in Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo is stabbed by one of the Nazgûl.

National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

Referenced in episode 8

“Griswold Family,” the code name Dustin assigns to the group made up of El, Mike, Will, Lucas, Max, Nancy and Jonathan in the finale, is pulled directly from one of the most popular comedies of the decade, National Lampoon’s Vacation. You can almost hear Chevy Chase’s voice calling out “Griswolds!” every time Dustin uses the callsign.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Referenced in episode 8

When Dustin finally manages to get in contact with Suzie in the season finale, there’s a Wizard of Oz poster hanging in her bedroom.

The Neverending Story (1984)

Referenced in episode 8

Dustin and Suzie’s rendition of The Neverending Story theme song is one of the Duffers‘ more overt season 3 movie references and gives viewers a nice reprieve from the otherwise heavy finale. Like Stranger Things, The Neverending Story is another franchise that leaves viewers longing for the carefree days of childhood — even if the childhoods of both the Hawkins’ kids and Bastian (Barret Oliver) are far from carefree.