2015’s belated sequel Mad Max: Fury Road featured numerous secret references to earlier franchise installments, but few viewers caught the cameo from the original movie's villain, Toecutter. Released in 1978, the Australian revenge thriller Mad Max was an unlikely hit upon its arrival in cinemas. Inspired by the cult curio Stone, the original Mad Max was a brutal story of a police officer slaughtering the gang - led by the psychotic villain Toecutter - that murdered his wife and child.
A low-budget effort, Mad Max was set in the near future to save on production costs and soon earned a sequel that doubled down on its sci-fi elements. While the original was a grounded thriller, The Road Warrior was a much more over-the-top dystopian sci-fi action movie. The success of The Road Warrior soon led to a third movie, Beyond Thunderdome, before creator George Miller’s Mad Max franchise went on an extended hiatus for thirty years.
When the series returned in 2015, Mad Max was recast as Tom Hardy and the fast-paced action was more violent than ever. However, despite this increased pace and Max's new face, 2015’s Fury Road had plenty in common with earlier installments. For example, the late Hugh Keays-Byrne returned to the Mad Max series to play Fury Road’s primary villain Immortan Joe, decades after he played the original Mad Max’s antagonist, Toecutter. This was not the only appearance that Toecutter made in Fury Road, though, as noted by some eagle-eyed fans. During the frantic cutting of Max’s Fury Road dream sequence, the last shot viewers can see is a glimpse of eyes popping out of a head. That’s a very brief insert shot lifted from the original Mad Max, depicting Toecutter’s gory fate.
The villain’s death is included in Max’s nightmare to underline that, despite his recasting, this is the same Max as always. Keays-Byrne’s Toecutter is killed near the close of the original Mad Max and the decision to reference this moment allows Fury Road to show the title character is still haunted by the bloody events of the first movie. This ties Hardy’s new version to the original Mad Max, while also foreshadowing Fury Road’s ending. At the climax of Fury Road, Hugh Keays-Byrne’s Immortan Joe is killed by Furiosa in a scene inspired by the original Mad Max villain Toecutter's gruesome demise.
Interestingly, that is not the only way in which Immortan Joe’s death is foreshadowed by the original Mad Max. Late in the 1979 movie, Keays-Byrne’s Toecutter warns Max’s doomed wife that she has to keep her cool despite his plans to kill her as, “when you lose the face, you've got nothing.” In a blackly comic pay-off, Fury Road kills Immortan Joe off by tearing off the character’s face, ironically echoing the words of the actor’s earlier Mad Max franchise villain.