Stranger Things has returned to Netflix for the first volume of its fifth and final season. Since its debut in 2016, series creators Matt and Ross Duffer have filled the show with callbacks to the most iconic films of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.
Some of those allusions might fly over the heads of younger viewers, but they play into the show’s nostalgia factor for the audience that lived through those decades and watched many of those films while they were new. Season 5 will likely have its own references to various films, but through the first four seasons of the show, these are Stranger Things’ best callbacks to classic movies.
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Image Credit: Universal Pictures The first season of Stranger Things is filled with nods to E.T., including the opening scene where the kids play Dungeons & Dragons.
During the season, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is an analogue for the iconic alien, fitting because the outside world is like another planet to her.
Smaller homages to Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece are scattered through the first eight episodes, but Episode 7’s levitating and flipping van full of government agents is our favorite, as Eleven demonstrates a less gentle touch with her powers than E.T. has with his soaring bike riders.
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Poltergeist (1982)
Image Credit: MGM One of Poltergeist’s most memorable scence is when the Freeling family’s television becomes a conduit to the spirit realm. Stranger Things used Joyce’s Christmas lights to do the same thing in Season 1, when she realizes that her missing son, Will, can communicate with her by making the lights blink.
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Stand by Me (1986)
Image Credit: Columbia Pictures The sixth episode of Season 1, “The Monster,” intentionally invokes Rob Reiner‘s coming-of-age classic Stand by Me, one of the most famous non-horror stories by Stephen King. The biggest threat to a group of kids in the wilderness isn’t something supernatural, it’s a group of bullies.
Mike would have died near the end of that episode if Eleven hadn’t arrived in time to save him. That was one of the rare moments in the show where the kids faced a very down-to-earth kind of evil.
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Alien (1979)/Aliens (1986)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Some of the Duffer brothers’ nods to Alien are subtle, like David O’Bannon, the cop who finds Will’s fake body. He’s named after Dan O’Bannon, the screenwriter for Alien. The Demogorgon in Season 1 was very much inspired by the Xenomorphs from Alien.
But it was the first season finale that takes things even further by sending Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) into the Upside Down while wearing spacesuit-like outfits that resembled the ones from Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic.
The Duffers also pay tribute to James Cameron‘s classic sequel throughout Season 2, bringing in that film’s baddie Paul Reiser, who served as the Weyland-Yutani corporate flunky, to play against type as the sympathetic scientist Dr. Owens in the Hawkins National Lab. And then there’s the Episode 6 massacre that is practically a direct lift from the 1986 film.
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Ghostbusters (1984)
Image Credit: Columbia Pictures The Duffers are pretty overt with their love for Ghostbusters in the second season premiere, “MADMAX.” The four primary male kids — Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) — dress as the Ghostbusters for Halloween. For the period, what they have are some pretty impressive cosplays. Their choice of costumes also leads to some conflict among the boys, because Lucas refuses to be Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) just because he’s Black. That’s why Lucas and Mike both wind up as Peter Venkman, Bill Murray’s character in the films.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Image Credit: Columbia PIctures Considering that Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out nearly five decades ago, it’s likely only hardcore Spielberg fans spotted the reference in the second season premiere, “MADMAX.” Will’s vision of the door opening to the Upside Down was almost an exact recreation of a similar scene in Close Encounters, when another young child, Barry (Cary Guffey), sees something incredible after he opens a door.
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The Terminator (1984)
Image Credit: Skydance Throughout Season 3, Joyce and Hopper are pursued by Grigori (Andrey Ivchenko), a relentless Russian enforcer who seems quite similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 from Cameron’s original Terminator. Even Grigori’s accent sounds a lot like Arnold’s.
Grigori simply won’t be stopped and he even moves like the T-800 while hunting down his targets. It nearly costs Hopper his life to take down Grigori in the season finale, and the Russian bad-ass remains one of the show’s most effective secondary threats.
Meanwhile, Season 5 will bring Schwarzenegger’s Terminator franchise costar Linda Hamilton into the Stranger Things universe, futher linking the film and the show.
Linda Hamilton as Dr. KayNetflix -
Carrie (1976)
Image Credit: MGM Eleven is a lot like Stephen King’s Carrie if the latter had more self control and friends to call her own. While their telekinetic powers are very similar, Eleven’s crew help her overcome the idea that she was a monster.
It wasn’t until the first few episodes of Season 4 that Eleven has a taste of the high school hell that drove Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) mad. Unfortunately for Eleven, she didn’t have her powers at the time to fight off the mean girls.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Image Credit: New Line Cinema Season 4 couldn’t get any more obvious with the show’s biggest villain, Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, plays Vecna’s father, Victor Creel. This time, it’s Englund’s on-screen son, Henry Creel/Vecna, who is haunting helpless teenagers, especially Max (Sadie Sink), in their waking dreams.
Late in Season 4, Vecna even briefly kidnaps Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), named after Heather Langenkamp’s final girl from the original Nightmare.