These are visual crossover clues found in one horror movie that pay homage to another, found tucked away in the background or even hidden in plain sight. You see the distinction.

Silent Hill may hold the dubious distinction of being another movie that’s inferior to its videogame inspiration, but one thing the movie got right was its respectful ode to Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned. Just as James Gunn did with the Thing-poking R.J. MacReady funeral home in Slither, the edifice of the Midwich Elementary School building that Alessa attends is an overt reference to the accursed village where alien-like children with glowing eyes and white hair terrorize the citizenry.

There’s a delicious irony in the fact that golden-era scream queen, Janet Leigh, wanted nothing more than for her daughter to avoid horror movie acting, only to see Jamie Lee Curtis become her own preeminent generational scream queen. The connection between the two is honored in the paltry Halloween H20, in which Janet Leigh is not only cast alongside her daughter, but is further linked to her iconic role of Marion Crane in Hitchcock’s Psycho. Notice the sweet old classic 1957 Ford sedan above that Lee’s flaunting in H20? Yup, that’s the same ride Norman Bates dumped into the swamp after slaughtering Leigh in the shower in Psycho. Same plates an all: NFB 418

While most know that one year after redefining the zombie subgenre with Shaun of the Dead, star Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright showed up as rabid zombies in Romero’s Land of the Dead, many may have missed all the subtle visual gags in their own flick. Per the Romero love, take a peek at Pegg’s work-badge. Indeed, that says Foree Electric, as in Ken Foree, star of Romero’s beloved Dawn of the Dead. Further background sight-gags and references can be found, as in the Fulci Restaurant ad spotted in the newspaper directory. Fulci of course helmed Zombie, yet another inspiration behind Shaun of the Dead.

Damn I’ve always loved this self-congratulatory shout-out! Do you recall who directed the superb Night of the Creeps? Now do you recount who helmed The Monster Squad one year later? Yessir, Fred Dekker is the man behind both flicks, yet strangely pays homage to a movie of his own that had not even been released yet. “Go Monster Squad!” would make little sense when spotting the clue in 1986, but one year later, the reference makes all the sense in the world. Dekker only directed three films in his career, and these two, both starring Tom Atkins mind you, are some of my all time 80s horror favorites. I’m glad to see Dekker connect the two!

I’ll admit, this one freaked me the fuck out. And it’s not that it’s even scary, it’s just that the visual clue is so obviously in plain sight, and yet, having seen the Grindhouse double feature at least five times (as well as being a fan of the movie referenced), I’ve never once noticed it. But there it is folks. Hanging on the wall right above the table is Jack Burton’s tank-top from John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. Of course, the meta-reference is made all the more pertinent due to the fact Death Proof also stars the great Kurt Russell. There are even several shots of Russell in the same frame as the tank-top, making the connection even stronger.

In a prop literally shared across both film franchises, Sam Raimi’s Necronomicon, aka the Book of the Dead that is seen throughout the Evil Dead series, makes a brief appearance in Adam Marcus’ Jason Goes to Hell. The tome pops up late in the film, just before Jason is pulled to hell by Freddy Krueger’s glove (another nice nod, but not nearly as clandestine). Our man Voorhees marauds through the dark moldering abode at the end of the film, quickly coming to a table adorned with ancient texts. The one front and center is indeed Raimi’s Deadite scroll, which makes Sam one of the most crossed-referenced horror movie Easter egg purveyors of all!

James-I’ve-been-turning- people-Wan with fear for well over decade now sure loves the legacy left behind by Saw, his breakout horror hit. In specific, Wan loves to subtly tuck the sinister visage of Billy Puppet, the maniacal mascot of the entire Saw franchise, into dark corners of his other titles. The first instance can be found in Wan’s Dead Silence, in which, toward the end, characters amble down a dark corridor and pass by Billy Puppet sitting in the right foreground corner. If that wasn’t alarming enough, in Wan’s Insidious, on the chalkboard behind Josh Lambert’s shoulder in his classroom sits an eerie chalk-sketching of Billy, frilly hair, spiral cheeks and all!

Apparently, the murderous merger of two gargantuan horror movie franchises – Alien and Predator – was planted in our collective subconscious as early as 1990. That’s some serious fucking premarket research right there. Indeed, at the ending of the risibly inferior Predator 2, a trophy case full of collected skeletons includes, for no other reason than to germinate the seeds of a mega-mash-up, a Xenomorph skull. Word is this was director Stephen Hopkins’ idea, as he wanted to pay tribute to the Dark Horse comic already popular Aliens vs. Predator comics. Since Fox owned both properties, a crossover was easy to license, giving round one in the battle to Predator.

Sam Raimi and Wes Craven had a playful relationship. In Craven’s seminal horror masterpiece, A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the movies Nancy watches while desperately trying to stay awake is in fact Raimi’s original Evil Dead. Picking up on the nod, Raimi responded in kind three years later in Evil Dead 2 by hanging Freddy Kreuger’s razor-claw glove on the wall of Ash’s toolshed. The glove is a bit difficult to spot in the background, but Raimi is sure to include it in a number of shots as to leave no doubt of the glove’s portentous presence. Of course, Raimi loves his horror movie Easter eggs, which is why he places his trusty Oldsmobile Delta ’88 in damn near every one of his films, including Spider-Man and even Ash Vs. Evil Dead.

Well, we’ve arrived at the King of Easter Eggs and encoded subliminal messages. See this shot of Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s peerless masterwork Eyes Wide Shut? Notice the address is 237, illuminated by Shining Christmas lights? Coincidence? One might think so until learning this building does not exist, but was manufactured on the soundstage at Elstree studio in England, the façade of which is reused later in the film as the Jason Hotel (notice the three arches). Here’s the point. While there are many far-fetched, conspiracy-laden, tin-foil readings of Kubrick’s work (including the movie Room 237), there’s no doubt that Kubrick has used subliminal imagery in his work as far back as Lolita, when the salacious subject matter forced him to rethink the movie in visual innuendos, as a means of avoiding MPAA penalty. Much has been made about Kubrick’s The Shining as a coded confession of his secret relationship with NASA to film the moon landing. But honestly, more needs to be made about grand gestalt that is Eyes Wide Shut. This movie visually references every single Kubrick movie before it, including The Shining and its infamous room 237 (the hospital in the film is also addressed 237, giving us a twinning effect… more Shining allusions). The level of detail and hidden messaging in Eyes Wide Shut is frightening beyond belief!