19 "Dungeons & Dragons" Easter Eggs For Longtime Players In "Honor Among Thieves"
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves made an impressive showing at the box office last weekend, proving that the decades-spanning property still has a bright future in the cultural landscape.
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While Honor Among Thieves flourishes in its own right with a sharp script and charismatic performances, this Dungeons & Dragons movie has plenty of Easter eggs that players of the role-playing game are sure to savor.
With this in mind, I've assembled 19 shoutouts, references and teases to the greater D&D gaming universe that eagle-eyed players can spot in Honor Among Thieves. Here we go:
1.The Gelatinous Cube
One of Honor Among Thieves’ most fun set pieces pits the protagonists in a dangerous maze-like structure filled with dangerous beasts and traps. The group eventually decides to find salvation in one of Dungeon & Dragons’ most treacherous monsters, a blob-like cube of acidic ooze that will attempt to digest any creature it consumes. The film treats their gambit with the amount of danger that one may encounter in the RPG itself.
2.“Botch” Dynamics
There are few elements of Dungeons & Dragons that can be either as hilarious or as devastating as a “botch,” which is the distinction of rolling a natural one on an incredibly critical situation. While the mathematical and dice elements of Dungeons & Dragons are largely absent from Honor Among Thieves, the tough luck of Simon’s magic spells is a prime example of “botch” dynamics at work, especially in the scene where his illusion of Edgin goes terribly wrong.
3.The Owlbear
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Honor Among Thieves hinged its marketing around some of its unique monstrous reveals, with the most prominent likely being the shapeshifting Doric as an Owlbear, a creature that’s exactly what it sounds like. Renown among D&D diehards as one of the more ferocious and relentless monstrosities in the game, the character's design made it understandably appealing to be featured for the big budget D&D cinematic reboot.
4.Tabaxi
5.The Class Types
Any Dungeons & Dragons player can tell you that the most important aspect of the game is defining your character, and choosing your class will affect your interactions, battle strategy, and weaknesses. As such, the core cast of Honor Among Thieves represent several distinct classes from D&D: bard (Chris Pine), barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez), druid (Sophia Lillis), paladin (Regé-Jean Page), sorcerer (Justice Smith), and rogue (Hugh Grant).
6.The Aarakocra and Dragonborn
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Fans of Dungeons & Dragons don’t have to wait very long to get a pretty great Easter egg in Honor Among Thieves, as longtime players will instantly recognize a pair of humanoid races from the game during Edgin’s testimony scene. D&D players may be immediately impressed by the practically achieved Dragonborn character on the judge’s panel, but an appearance from an Aarakocra (also mostly achieved with practical SFX) might make any devout D&D player’s jaw drop.
7.Cities of the Forgotten Realms
Dungeons & Dragons has had many iconic locations throughout many modules and editions, and perceptive viewers might pick up on a few notable mentions of such throughout Honor Among Thieves. While the film takes place largely in the 4E staple Neverwinter, Baldur’s Gate and Waterdeep both get teased with shoutouts from Edgin in the film while planning their post-prison break ventures.
8.Themberchaud
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Another hallmark of Honor Among Thieves' marketing campaign is Themberchaud, a chunky dragon who disrupts our protagonist's plan to make out like bandits with a stolen magical item and escape from Sofina's henchmen. Notably, the aforementioned dragon debuted in Dungeons & Dragons' second edition and was front-and-center in the fifth edition module Out of the Abyss.
9.Breaking Concentration
In Dungeons & Dragons, there’s always a temptation to play as a magic user, just because duh, magic can be dope. But any D&D player will tell you that being a magic user is a double-edged sword because sometimes your strongest spells can be stopped with the smallest break of concentration. This is a fairly pivotal part of our heroes’ strategies during the climactic battle in Honor Among Thieves.
10.Smite
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While Regé-Jean Page's paladin character Xenk does a fantastic job of establishing his over-the-top selflessness and straightforward nature, the character also reveals himself as a stone-cold badass when he takes on some green-flame blade-wielding soldiers singlehandedly in one of the more memorable action scenes. For nonplayers, his skills may be extraordinary, but D&D players will immediately see Xenk's advantage in his glowing sword, which has been imbued with the "Smite" spell, providing him with a supernatural advantage against his enemies in combat.
11.The Cult of the Dragon
In one of most memorable scenes in Honor Among Thieves, our gang of unlikely heroes need to find the location of a legendary item and utilize the "Speak to Dead" spell to get their information. They end up finding their way to a cemetery filled with veterans of a war ignited by the Cult of the Dragon, which D&D players will recognize as one of the more evil organizations in the game’s lore and a longtime enemy of the Harpers, with which Edgin was previously associated.
12.Wild Shape
In one of the more obvious pulls from D&D lore, Honor Among Thieves features a sequence in which Doric (Sophia Lillis) uses the well-known spell "Wild Shape" to infiltrate Castle Never. The gambit is compromised when Sofina the Red Witch detects her in her animalistic form, leading to one of the more visually inspired set pieces in the film.
13.Mordenkainen and Elminster
D&D players should get a kick out of seeing the myriad teases and hints toward the larger universe of the role-playing game, but real ones will freak out over a pair of specific name-drops in Honor Among Thieves. The first is of the legendary archmage Mordenkainen, who helped protect the vault at Castle Never with his nigh-unbreakable spells, while the latter is Elminster, an incredibly powerful wizard who is also cited as the great-great-grandfather of Simon Aumar, as played in Honor Among Thieves by Justice Smith.
14.The Mimic and Displacer Beasts
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In Honor Among Thieves, our heroes find themselves in a deceptive and dangerous maze in the third act, pitting them against several beasts and monstrosities from D&D's Monster Manual. Among them include the displacer beast, an image-projecting panther-like beast with sharp tentacles protruding from its back, and the iconic mimic creature, which often disguises itself as doors or treasure chests to lure unsuspecting victims into its all-consuming jaws.
15.Cursed Items
D&D players can all agree that the bane of our collective RPG experiences is the concept of cursed items that somehow backfire or serve as a plague on its owner. In Honor Among Thieves, we see this dynamic at play with "The Helm of Disjunction," which Simon attempts to master only to fall victim to its powerful self-defense mechanisms.
16.Rust Monsters
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When Holga and Edgin are being escorted toward their impromptu execution, you may have noticed a pair of creatures attacking a nearby lock. While most might write the moment as simple world-building, D&D fans will immediately identify the miniscule menaces as rust monsters, one of the more annoying beings in the D&D universe that enjoy devouring poorly maintained weapons and armor.
17.Szass Tam and the Red Wizards of Thay
The Red Wizards of Thay have been well-established among the top-tier villains of Dungeons & Dragons since its third edition, so it's no surprise that Sofina and the villains of Honor Among Thieves are among its ranks. But those who have delved deeper into D&D might be more excited by the appearance of Szass Tam, a diabolical and undead leader of the Red Wizards, in a shocking flashback sequence.
18.Meteor Swarm
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There are a lot of hard-hitting spells in Dungeons & Dragons, like "Magic Missile," "Fireball," and "Finger of Death." But one of the more prominent attack spells featured in Honor Among Thieves is "Meteor Swarm," a self-explanatory spell that Sofina wields against the protagonists during the onset of their final fight.
19.The Bag of Holding
In one of the more subtle Easter eggs in Honor Among Thieves, you may have notice that Simon is the one in charge of carrying a lot of items along the way and seemingly has items for different situations from out of nowhere. This is because Simon has a small pouch called a Bag of Holding, a magical item that allows its holder to contain a near-limitless number of items by sending them to a magical plane that only they can access.
