A Quiet Place Part II owes much of its success to past horror and sci-fi films that inspired director John Krasinski, which receive several Easter eggs and references throughout the sequel. A Quiet Place is one of the biggest new horror franchises and is expected to receive at least one more sequel following A Quiet Place 2. Seeing its major blockbuster success as one of the first widely distributed theatrical releases in the COVID-19 pandemic, A Quiet Place is poised to become a franchise with spin-offs and inter-universe connections like its influential horror series Alien.
A Quiet Place 2 picks up immediately after the events of A Quiet Place, which follows Evelyn, Regan, and Marcus Abbott after the death of their husband and father Lee. The family has been in the relative safety of their New York farmhouse for the first year of post-apocalyptic life, though they now venture out into the world to find more survivors. The Abbotts happen upon old friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy) who reluctantly takes in the family and assists Regan in her journey to find the island sending out a cryptic radio broadcast.
Krasinski cites several classic horror movies as inspiration for making A Quiet Place, which he thanks by including subtle nods throughout the films. Krasinski claimed in an interview [via The Cowboy Channel] that his wife and A Quiet Place co-star Emily Blunt convinced him to direct the film because he had always wanted to make his own version of Jaws. This piece of trivia connects further to one of his inspirations, Alien, which was originally pitched as “Jaws in space.” Krasinski is quickly becoming an acclaimed horror director whose A Quiet Place films will likely go down in history as one of the greats, so here’s a breakdown of all the Easter eggs and references to influential pieces in A Quiet Place Part II.
A Quiet Place: Beau’s Rocket
One of the most tragic elements of the first A Quiet Place movie is when, only a few months into the apocalypse, the Abbotts’ young son Beau is killed by a monster. The family stops at the downtown pharmacy to get medical supplies, though Beau is attracted to a toy rocket ship left on one of the shelves. A Quiet Place already hints the spaceship will have dangerous consequences when Beau knocks it off the shelf, barely saved from making noise by Lee. He takes the batteries out, but Regan secretly gives Beau the toy before leaving the shop. As 4-year-olds do, Beau sneaks the batteries back into the toy to truly experience it, though its consequences are dire once he falls behind to play with it. The rocket ship makes space sound effects as he flies it around, instantly attracting a nearby monster who attacks Beau before Lee can run back to reach him.
In the opening scene of A Quiet Place Part II, Lee walks into the same pharmacy on the afternoon before the aliens crash down on Earth. As Lee travels to the produce section to get a bag of oranges for Marcus’s baseball game, the camera pans to him passing the rocket ship toy on the shelf where Beau finds it in the previous film. The rocket-ship Easter egg is an instant reminder to the audiences that normalcy will not last for the Abbotts, and a quiet baseball game will quickly turn into the loss of both Beau and Lee. Including a poignant article from a previous film is a trope of franchise films to put one instantly in the mindset of the characters, and Krasinski implements this tactic perfectly.
Interstellar
One of the first references to a recent sci-fi film in A Quiet Place 2 is to Christopher Nolan’s 2014 epic Interstellar. Both movies involve small-town America becoming a post-apocalyptic nightmare, though dust and blights haunt Interstellar while aliens annihilate A Quiet Place. An early Interstellar scene where the Coopers and town commune normally at the local baseball game mirrors the Abbotts attending Marcus’ small-town little league game in the opening scene.
In Interstellar, most of the surviving town members attend the Yankees game, where the event is postponed after the fans and players stop to see a terrifying dust cloud moving in. The next scene involves the citizens rushing to their cars as they all try to either leave town or return home. A Quiet Place II references this scenario when the town is watching little league baseball, then is interrupted as a giant meteor is seen crashing down in the distance. The town erupts into chaos as parents gather their children and people find their vehicles, though aliens attack A Quiet Place's Earth instead of dust being the deadly force.
Jaws
A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Easter egg comes when Marcus joins his team for the baseball game. The little league team happens to be sponsored by “Brody’s Pizzeria,” which Krasinski revealed is a reference to Jaws’ (1975) Chief Brody. A Quiet Place’s monsters take a similar trope from Jaws’ stalking shark villain, with both giving specific sounds to warn of their presence. Jaws’ shark is accompanied by a John Williams theme to alert the audience, while A Quiet Place’s aliens make an other-worldly clicking noise. A Quiet Place took a lot of inspiration from classic horror films like Jaws, Alien, and Hitchcock thrillers, so it’s no wonder he would include direct references to his biggest influences.
Lost
One of the most jarring moments in the sequel is when Emmett and Regan, plagued by over a year of post-apocalyptic life, arrive on the island to find a community of people laughing, playing, and yelling. The survivors live communally in close-by homes that appear to be more of a summer camp, which happened to be filmed at the New York Dunkirk Camp, that is eerily reminiscent of the Others’ living quarters in Lost. Emmett and Regan’s discovery of a group of people living normally whereas the rest of the population is struggling to survive is equally as strange as when Jack and the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 find a group of people living on the island as if at a resort instead of deadly, living-on-scraps means to survival. Thankfully for Emmet and Regan, the island community is not dangerous like the Others and actually wants to help other survivors.
Alien
Aside from serving as inspiration for a claustrophobic horror film where an almost identical alien creature attacks the protagonists, A Quiet Place Part II gave a small nod to Alien (1979). The Easter egg for Alien comes about halfway through the movie after Regan and Marcus discover “Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin is being broadcast by a radio station. Regan deducts the message behind the song to mean it’s being broadcast on a nearby island off of New York, so she finds a list of all off-shore radio stations. She shows Marcus a compiled list of stations and a correlating map, where the key radio station’s street name happens to be “Nostromo.” Nostromo is the name of the spaceship that the crew in Alien are terrorized on, so it’s a clever nod to how the island still may not be as safe as they think. In Alien, one of the creatures attaches itself to Kane as transportation onto the Nostromo, while in A Quiet Place 2, an alien somehow takes one of the boats and follows Regan and Emmett to the island.
The Office
John Krasinski rose to fame as Jim Halpert on all 9 seasons of The Office, which he pays tribute to with a small Easter egg in A Quiet Place 2. When Regan is showing Marcus the maps of nearby islands that could be transmitting the signal, the camera focuses on the nearby city Stamford, Connecticut, which happens to be a location Krasinski’s character Jim spent time at in The Office season 3. Jim leaves Scranton, Pennsylvania for a promotion at the Stamford branch after being rejected by Pam, though only stays for the first half of the season. Krasinski including a nod to the show that gave so much to his career was special for those who have followed him since 2004, and Stamford, a city closer to the New York coast, was the easiest way to accomplish a connection.
The Last of Us
One of the most obvious references in A Quiet Place Part II is to The Last of Us, both involving an adult man traveling on a post-apocalyptic journey alongside a teenage girl. The Last of Us is a 2014 PlayStation video game that centers on a middle-aged, angry, grizzly man, Joel, who finds himself tasked with escorting a teenage girl named Ellie who may hold the secret to end the apocalypse. The pseudo-father-daughter relationship in The Last of Us is mirrored in A Quiet Place 2 with Emmett and Regan’s companionship. As Emmett travels alongside Regan, he is assisting a girl who may have found the answer to survival in their new world.
This dynamic isn’t original to these two films considering it also plays out in Leon: The Professional and Logan. The difference is that the stakes are much higher for The Last of Us and A Quiet Place 2, where the man escorting the teenager is a means to post-apocalyptic survival for more than just themselves. The Last of Us is getting its own HBO TV series starring Pedro Pascal as Joel, so post-apocalyptic copies of the plot like A Quiet Place 2 will likely be upstaged.