Stranger Things Season 2 Easter Eggs, References, Callbacks

Get ready for the fourth episode of our nine-part Stranger Things 2 article series, in which we’ll do our very best to catch all the visual easter eggs, references, homages and callback from the fabulous 80s that the author put on-screen. If you’re looking for the soundtrack and music references, click here.

In case you missed the previous parts, dedicated to the easter eggs in the first three episodes, check out the links in the Episode List below to make amend! There are two links to the right of each episode: the first one is dedicated to the visual homages, while the second lists the soundtrack & music references.

Let’s now start our journey through all the Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 4: Will the Wise easter eggs from the 80s (and not) that we found: feel free to tell us if we missed anything… there’s a huge chance we did!

Stranger Things – Season 2 Episode List

Episode 2.1 – Chapter One: MADMAX [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.2 – Chapter Two: Trick or Treat, Freak [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.3 – Chapter Three: The Pollywog [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.4 – Chapter Four: Will the Wise [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.5 – Chapter Five: Dig Dug [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.6 – Chapter Six: The Spy [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.7 – Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister [easter egg list] [OST & music reference list]
Episode 2.8 – Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer
Episode 2.9 – Chapter Nine: The Gate

Chapter Four: Will the Wise

Head & Shoulders: We definitely can’t miss the vintage H&S shampoo bottle in Will’s bathroom, which come straight from the eighties: Procter & Gamble would be definitely pleased of that homage!

Stranger Things Season 2 - All the Easter Eggs, References, Homages and Callbacks - Episode 4: Will the Wise — Stranger Things – Season 02 Episode 04 – Head & Shoulders [14.15]

Apple: In January 1983, when the Cupertino about-to-be giant released the desktop computer called Lisa, they slightly renewed their iconic logo using the classic 4-bit RGBI color palette: to celebrate that, they went out with a bunch of new posters, one of them being hanged on a wall in Hawkins school’s Audio & Visual Room.

The Evil Dead: When Eleven opens the basement door the scene reminds the one already seen in The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981).

George Sarton: When Nancy and Jonathan goes to the Hawkins lab to lay their trap, Dr. Owens says a phrase to them which is actually a quote from the father of the science history discipline: “Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind”. We don’t think Sarton would’ve agreed to the Upside-Down experiments led there though…

Camp Crosley: In this episode we get to see again Dustin’s room, which is arguably the most important source of easter egg of the whole series. This time, just at the right facing the entrance door, we get to see a vintage poster of Camp Crosley, an YMCA camp for all ages – but mostly for kids – founded in 1921 (read the whole story here) located on Little Lake Tippecanoe (James Lake), in North Webster, Indiana. It seems that Dustin went there at least once!

Alien: Although we’ve already seen the Demogorgon in Season 1, it had already reached its mature stage, hence we couldn’t appreciate the huge resemblances with the evil xenomorph creatures from Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979). They hatch from eggs, grow into human bodies just like parasytes, then gets expelled and go through a growth cycle until they become huge and dangerous. Their physical appearance is not similar, but they move and hunt in a similar fashion. The fact that Dart eated Dustin’s cat can also be read as an Alien reference, since that movie involved a cat as well, which gets to survive in Scott’s movie… yet not here.