The Chilling Reference You Missed In Stranger Things Season 3
Hawkins, Indiana is a very peculiar place. The third season of the Netflix super-hit Stranger Things raised the stakes considerably, what with huge monsters, copious body horror, and even a secret base full of angry Russians. The show's ragtag group of small-town teenagers and adults have cleared an amazing number of sci-fi hurdles, government conspiracies, and hellish beasts from a strange dimension known as the Upside Down, while also delighting the viewers with a seemingly never-ending stream of neat eighties pop culture references.
Fortunately, the third season was full of cool details and events, ripe for analysis, to keep you occupied while you wait for Stranger Things season four to make Hawkins even weirder. In fact, this past season of the show had one particularly interesting, horrifying, and perfect Easter egg that you might have completely missed during your initial viewing. Ready to hear about the chilling reference you didn't notice?
Invasion of the (Stranger) Body Snatchers
The 1978 remake/standalone sequel of the 1956 sci-fi/horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers contained some pretty classic terror imagery, seeing as it dealt with body-stealing parasitic slime-creatures from another world. The third season of Stranger Things features a very similar plot, in which the nightmarish Mind Flayer infects people with mind-control parasites, and turns them into its drones. As such, it was only natural that the show included a playful, yet horrifying nod at the classic film.
Here's the deal: A key plot element in Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the way the evil, body-snatched "pod people" point and screech at humans who are still, well, humans. As Hanh Nguyen of IndieWire notes, Stranger Things features a similar scene wherein an ambulance is taking the mind-controlled Ms. Driscoll (Peggy Miley) to the hospital. When they pass the eerie warehouse, where the monster in control of the parasite lurks, she performs an excellent and chilling approximation of the classic Body Snatchers screech-and-reach.
Stranger Things isn't happy just making one allusion to this horror classic, either. Driscoll's very name is quite likely a nod to Body Snatchers character Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams). The season's most important location, Starcourt Mall, also features a store called Kaufman Shoes — and it just so happens that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was directed by Philip Kaufman.