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Warning! Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things season 5, volume 1.
Stranger Things is renowned for its movie references — it’s one of the show’s favorite cultural currencies — and season 5 includes nods to a wide range of films, from Back to the Future to The Great Escape. In the current age of streaming and social media, cinema doesn’t have the stranglehold on the zeitgeist that it once had.
But Stranger Things takes place in the 1980s, when shopping malls were thriving, Kate Bush was duly revered, and movies like The Goonies and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off dominated the conversation. Stranger Things is jam-packed with movie references acknowledging its cinematic inspirations.
Spies Like Us
In Stranger Things’ season 5 premiere, we learn that Hawkins has been quarantined by the military. There are soldiers manning checkpoints around the town to make sure no unauthorized persons get in or out. But their vetting process leaves a lot to be desired.
Murray has been regularly getting in and out of town to deliver supplies to the gang by posing as a trucker. His alias, “Austin Millbarge,” is the name of Dan Aykroyd’s character from the classic comedy Spies Like Us.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
The climactic set-piece of Stranger Things season 5, volume 1 sees all hell break loose at the MAC-Z. Mike and his friends struggle to liberate the kidnapped children while the military desperately fends off a Demogorgon invasion. Eventually, the big bad — Vecna himself — makes an appearance to kick this final battle into gear.
Vecna makes a heck of an entrance through the gateway to the Upside Down. Bathed in the ghoulish crimson-red hue of this parallel dimension, we see Vecna’s intimidating silhouette get closer and closer. It’s ripped straight from Darth Vader’s iconic hallway massacre in Rogue One, and it achieves the same terrifying effect.
Good Morning, Vietnam
Early on in Stranger Things’ final season, we learn that Robin has become a local radio personality with the colorful DJ pseudonym “Rockin’ Robin.” She updates the townspeople on the latest military protocols while bringing them all the best from her oldies record collection. But her broadcasts also contain secret coded messages for her friends.
This is similar to Robin Williams’ character Adrian Cronauer from the movie Good Morning, Vietnam. Much like Robin, Cronauer uses a radio show to keep people’s spirits up during hard times, and he also uses his broadcasts to spread coded messages.
The Goonies
When we catch up with Eleven, she’s in the midst of intense training. Hopper and Joyce are preparing Eleven for her inevitable battle against Vecna’s forces and the military occupiers. Her training outfit consists of a headband, a gray sweater, short shorts over gray long johns, and a pair of striped legwarmers.
At first glance, this might just look like the kind of outfit everyone wore to work out in the ‘80s. But it’s actually a like-for-like recreation of Josh Brolin’s workout clothes as Brand in The Goonies.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
When they realize Vecna’s footsoldiers will be going after Derek next, Mike and his group start preparing for the worst. They put a crash test dummy in Derek’s bed to trick the monster.
This is the same thing Ferris did in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While he was out having the time of his life on the streets of Chicago, he left a crash test dummy in his bed so that, to the untrained eye, it would look like he was still there.
Poltergeist
In one of Stranger Things season 5’s scariest sequences, the Demogorgon comes after Mike’s little sister Holly. It rips open a portal from the Upside Down into Holly’s bedroom and attempts to pull her through. This is almost identical to a shot from Poltergeist.
In Poltergeist, the ghosts open up a portal in Carol Anne’s closet and she desperately clings to her bedpost as they try to pull her in. Holly does the exact same thing when the Demogorgon comes for her. The color of the portal is even the same.
Home Alone
Mike and the gang don’t just put a crash test dummy in Derek’s bed; they booby-trap the whole house. Using regular household items, they turn the entire building into a deathtrap. When the monster shows up, it doesn’t stand a chance.
This is exactly what Kevin McCallister did when a pair of opportunistic burglars came to his house in Home Alone. He set up a bunch of homemade traps to prevent them from getting what they wanted, and it worked a charm.
The Terminator
This isn’t an overt reference to a movie, but rather a meta subversion of its hero-villain dynamic. In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played an evil, emotionless, unstoppable killing machine, and Linda Hamilton played the mild-mannered everywoman that he targeted.
In Stranger Things, as the villainous Dr. Kay, Hamilton is the evil, emotionless, unstoppable killing machine. It’s similar to when Sergio Leone cast all-American hero Henry Fonda as a child-killing monster in Once Upon a Time in the West.
The Great Escape
Since the military are routinely patroling the surface of the town, Mike and the group are using a network of underground tunnels to get around Hawkins. When they figure out which tunnel would help them extract the abducted children from the MAC-Z, Robin dubs this tunnel “Dick.”
In the war movie masterpiece The Great Escape, the P.O.W.s dig three tunnels out of the camp and name them Tom, Dick, and Harry. I’m convinced Stranger Things only used this reference so they could have their characters say the word “Dick” in every other line of dialogue.
Back To The Future
When Robin needs a minute alone to talk to Will, she fakes an emergency. She exclaims, “Great Scott!,” and tells Joyce that there’s something wrong with the “flux capacitor,” and she needs Will’s help to fix it. Joyce doesn’t catch the reference, but we, of course, know that Robin borrowed this pseudo-scientific jargon from Back to the Future.
Unlike with most of the movies referenced in Stranger Things, we actually saw the first time Robin watched this film. In the penultimate episode of season 3, after being drugged by the Soviets, Steve and Robin hid out in a screening of Back to the Future, so that’s where she picked up this reference.
