Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has been praised for featuring more comedy than its predecessor, but one obscure joke went over most viewers' heads. The 2019 movie follows Knives Out with Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) attempting to solve another, completely unrelated murder, and this time it's on a sun-soaked Greek island instead of a gothic-looking New England mansion. When invited to tech billionaire Miles Bron's (Edward Norton) private island for a fun murder mystery weekend, an actual killing takes place, and everyone is a suspect, including the billionaire himself. What follows is tons of backstabbing and, more interestingly, exploration of the fantastical island.
Just like Knives Out, the big appeal of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the actual murder mystery, but unlike the 2019 movie, Glass Onion has tons of celebrity references and gags. Given how narcissistic and chauvinistic Miles is, most of the jokes are based on his malapropisms and name-dropping. And most of the other jokes stem from Benoit's disinterest in trivial things. Glass Onion's most obscure gag is a mix of both, as it occurs when Benoit and Miles are talking at the top of the Glass Onion, Miles' evil lair, and it's so subtle that it's easy to miss.
Benoit Mentions The Obscure 2001: A Space Odyssey Sequel
Benoit first enters the top of the Glass Onion when Miles questions him about how he ended up on the island, and the private detective is immediately taken aback by the over-the-top sculptures and paintings. The very first thing Benoit encounters is a monolithic icosahedron, the inside of which looks like a cosmic abyss and seemingly goes on forever. When Benoit looks deep into the Elon Musk-like Glass Onion villain's trippy sculpture, he says, "Oh my God, it's full of stars," which is a famous quote from the ground-breaking, influential, and spectacular 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The iconic line is spoken by David Bowman in the classic scene where he travels through the Star Gate in 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, Benoit follows the quote by saying, "2010: The Year We Make Contact." The character gets the name of the movie that he quotes totally wrong, but what's even funnier is that 2010: The Year We Make Contact is the all-but-forgotten sequel film that arrived 16 years later in 1984. Ironically, even though it's more linear and less ambiguous than its predecessor, the film underperformed at the box office (via Box Office Mojo), and since then, 2010: The Year We Make Contact disappeared into obscurity.
It’s A Testament To Benoit Being “Bad At Dumb Things”
Though Benoit getting the movie's name wrong might seem like a completely random joke, it perfectly fits with the character's struggle to wrap his head around trivial things. The private detective clearly doesn't have a great grasp on pop culture, which is proven in his very first scene in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery when Angela Lansbury is teaching him how to play the video game Among Us. Benoit ultimately says it himself when he tells Helen, "I am very bad at dumb things," and misnaming such an iconic movie is totally in his character.