From Wednesday Addams to Wes Craven's porn name: Your killer guide to Scream VI Easter eggs

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Scream VI.

You don't need to be a movie expert to enjoy this year's slasher sequel hit Scream VI, in which the quartet of survivors from the previous film (played by Jenna Ortega, Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, and Jasmin Savoy Brown) relocate from Woodsboro to New York in a vain attempt to avoid Ghostface. But horror fans can double their pleasure by looking out for the Easter eggs featured in the film by directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett beyond the many references to the franchise's own mythology.

"I love them," Bettinelli-Olpin says of peppering in the references. "I'm always like, 'If you get them, they're fun. And if you don't, it just doesn't matter.'"

"It's a way to make a movie more yours," adds Gillett. "You feel more connected to it. I mean, even the first line of this movie, 'Hasta El Fuego, please hold' — 'Hasta El Fuego' is the name of the text chain that we share with Guy [Busick] and Jamie [Vanderbilt], the writers, which is a Bad Boys joke. Our goal is: How far can we take a joke? The big win is [being able to] hold on to a joke long enough that it actually makes its way into the final product."

Philippe Bossé/Paramount Pictures 'Scream VI'

With Scream VI now available to watch on digital, we asked Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett to talk about the movie's Easter eggs and the stories behind them.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Everett Collection 'Jason Takes Manhattan'

The eighth Friday the 13th film playing in the apartment of film student — and doomed killer — Jason Carvey (Tony Revolori) is one of the movie's most obvious in-jokes, given that Jason Takes Manhattan is set, at least partly, in NYC.

"Jay [Prychdny], our editor, had originally put in a giallo movie that we couldn't get the rights to," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "We have a notes doc that's like a living document, that starts in pre-production and goes all the way through to the final edit, and it's just tracking our notes. We had a note up at the top of it the entire time: 'Is there a place for Jason Takes Manhattan?' And there never was. We just never got it in. And then, when we were trying to find a movie to replace [the giallo film], Paramount sent us a list of movies that they own, and that was one of them. We were like, 'Oh, done!' The second we saw it, we were like, 'Let's put that in Jason's apartment.' Then we had to steer ourselves clear of [including] the Times Square scene because it was a little too much, on the nose."

Less obvious is the scene's sartorial shout-out to giallo director Dario Argento. Revolori's character is wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with the words "Mosche di Velluto Grigio," the original title of Argento's 1971 movie Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

"It's his favorite movie," Gillett says of Carvey. "He just bought the shirt. He bought the shirt the day before he got murdered!"

Ready or Not

Eric Zachanowich/Fox Searchlight 'Ready Or Not'

The two directors made their name, commercially-speaking, with the 2019 horror-comedy Ready or Not, starring Samara Weaving as a new bride forced to play a lethal game with her murderous in-laws. In addition to casting Weaving in Scream VI as a film academic who is killed by Revolori's character, the new film's subway sequence also features an extra dressed up for Halloween as the actress's wedding dress from Ready Or Not.

"Avery [Plewes, Scream VI costume designer] designed the Ready or Not dress," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "We thought it would be really fun to have her design a costume of her own design."

"A meta within a meta within a meta," says Gillett.

"Samara was on set when we were shooting that," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "That was her first day visiting set. There were some very funny moments of seeing the cosplayer and real Samara right next to each other. A little brain-buster."

The subway sequence also includes brief cameos from the two directors. Gillett tongue-in-cheekedly describes their appearance as "the scariest shot in the movie. I, unfortunately, am more heavily-featured than Matt. He's dressed as Kurt Cobain and I am the fluffy-headed guy with the butcher knife through his head, sitting next to our producer William Sherak's daughter Eloise."

Tim Robinson

Netflix 'I Think You Should Leave'

The Saturday Night Live veteran and I Think You Should Leave star has a vocal cameo in the film, playing the boyfriend — or most recent sex partner, anyway — of Liana Liberato's Quinn Bailey. The Scream VI filmmakers connected with Robinson via their pal, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping director Akiva Schaffer.

"Tim is the voice of Paul 2.0, Quinn's boyfriend, the off-camera character who is in a couple of scenes and then gets brutally murdered," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "Akiva has directed some of Tim's show, and so we got to know him a little bit, and he came down and he did it for us like, a week before we finished. We'd even been dream casting it for a bit. We were like, 'Man, if we could get Tim Robinson to do this, that would be incredible.' He just came down to the Paramount lot and did those lines in like, half an hour. They made the scene for us."

"It was hard to not use all of the stuff he gave us," says Gillett. "There was a version of that scene where it just became a broad comedy, it became a sketch really quick. Tim gave us so many wonderful, hilarious lines."

Wes Craven

Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic Wes Craven

The Scream VI filmmakers paid twisted tribute to the late Master of Horror, who directed the first four Scream movies, by naming a prominently featured store 'Abe's Snake Bodega.' What's the connection? Well, 'Abe Snake' was the pseudonym Craven used when, early in his career, he directed the 1975 porn film The Fireworks Woman. The notion to homage the filmmaker in this fashion originated with Ice Nine Kills singer Spencer Charnas, another friend of Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett.

"We asked him to make a punk-rock flyer [and] on it was 'Abe Snake,'" says Bettinelli-Olpin. "When we saw that, we were like, that's a great idea, let's steal that for the bodega! So we did a little tweak on it and made it the bodega name. But that came from Spencer of Ice Nine Kills."

V/H/S

Everett Collection Kate Lyn Sheil in 'V/H/S'

The Radio Silence team — a creative collective comprising Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett, and Scream VI executive producer Chad Villella — directed and starred in a segment of the 2012 anthology horror film V/H/S, and Scream VI boasts a several references to the film and its other creators. When we first see Jenna Ortega's character, Tara, she is wearing a pirate costume similar to the one sported by Bettinelli-Olpin in V/H/S, while one of her friends is clad in a bear costume, just as Gillett's character is in the earlier film. "And the beer in the bodega and in the frat house is called Miska's Mead," says Gillett, "after Brad Miska, who runs Bloody Disgusting, who got us on V/H/S to begin with." Also? The surname of Jason Carvey's dismembered roommate Greg Bruckner is a tip of the hat to another V/H/S director, David Bruckner, who made last year's Hellraiser reboot. "Those are more just nods and winks to our friends," says Gillett.

Wednesday Addams

Netflix Jenna Ortega on 'Wednesday'

Finally, the ooky and spooky character played by Ortega on Netflix's Wednesday receives a visual nod during the Scream VI frat party sequence in the form of a Wednesday Addams costume worn by one of the attendees. "[We] definitely made that choice to feature that costume before Wednesday released, not knowing it would become the sensation that it would become," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "But we think it's all the more hilarious because of that."

Scream VI is now available to buy on Digital and is streaming on Paramount+. Paramount Home Entertainment will release the film in a 4K Ultra HD SteelBook, on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD July 11.

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