True Detective: Night County Easter Eggs

True Detective: Night County is already full of Easter eggs, and we’re only on the first episode.

HBO’s chilling crime drama, starring Jodie Foster investigating the mysterious disappearance of a research team, features hidden references to all three previous seasons. Here’s what’s been found so far.

The Yellow King

Episode one begins with the following title card: “…For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.” The text is attributed to Hildred Castaigne, the protagonist of a short story found in Robert W. Chambers’s 1895 collection The King in Yellow. True Detective season one’s primary antagonist was referred to as The Yellow King.

Lone Star Beer

The opening minutes of episode one feature a second blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Easter egg. Sitting next to a bowl of popcorn at the Tsalal research station is a bottle of Lone Star beer, Rust Cohle’s drink of choice in True Detective season one. Matthew McConaughey’s character can be seen guzzling the beverage throughout the first series.

Researchers’ Names

There are Easter eggs hidden in the missing researchers’ names. One is called Ralph Emerson, which is also the name of a 19th-century essayist and a leading light of transcendentalism, a belief system casting nature in a different light. Also, Peter Prior’s son is called Darwin, a reference to the most famous naturalist of all, Charles Darwin.

The Tsalal Arctic Research Station

If the name of the lab where the researchers disappear from sounds familiar, you’ve probably read Jules Verne’s 1897 novel An Antarctic Mystery. It features an island called Tsalal, which is said to be populated by an indigenous population prone to attacking white explorers. Night County similarly explores the racial tension between natives of Ennis, Alaska and those who came later.

The Blue King

There’s reference to a different coloured king in Night County: The Blue King. Although it’s got slightly less evil connotations being that it’s the name of a crab processing plant. Here’s where we meet Kali Reis’s Evangeline Navarro, who’s called to investigate a disturbance.

Blood Meridian

When detective Danvers is investigating the Tsalal Arctic Research Station in the wake of the researchers’ disappearance, she scans a book from one of the abandoned rooms. This book is Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian, a violent Western about outlaws who murder Native Americans. Similar themes are simmering in Night County’s Alaskan setting.

The Thing

The researchers’ shelves contain stacks of DVDs. One of them is The Thing, the 1982 horror classic taking place in an arctic research base besieged by a shape-shifting alien entity. Time will tell if an alien is indeed behind the attacks in Night County (it’s probably not).

Creepy kid’s drawing

Every vaguely scary film or series has to have a creepy drawing by a kid, and Night County is no different. Towards the end of the episode we see the sort of crudely horrific doodle that could only come from an innocent mind, which makes it all the more terrifying. The first True Detective was awash in similarly imagery.