Every Video Game Easter Egg From The Until Dawn Movie

This article contains spoilers for “Until Dawn.”

This month’s “Until Dawn” is the latest in an increasingly lengthy line of cinematic adaptations of popular video games, so one might initially think there’s nothing too novel to say about it. On the contrary, the film features a fair amount of originality and innovation, presenting a unique storyline, characters, and environments distinct from the 2015 game of the same name. Don’t worry, gamers; this isn’t a film wherein the source material has been changed and mutated beyond recognition. Yet it also isn’t a glorified remake, either, in contrast to the too-close-to-the-games “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and Max’s “The Last of Us” series. It’s also not the same thing as “A Minecraft Movie,” which is a film that’s biggest connection to its source material is almost exclusively in the form of Easter eggs.

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Instead, “Until Dawn” adapts the same underlying subtext of the video game, which is the idea of whether or not the player (or, in the film’s case, the viewer) could actually survive in a horror movie scenario. Where the game makes such a question immediate, the film addresses it by proxy, presenting the plight of five college-age protagonists as they inadvertently find themselves stuck in a time loop within a creepy remote area. There, the group is forced to face an ever-growing series of horror monsters over and over as they die and get resurrected in order to try again. Despite the structure, characters, and basic plot of the film deviating from the game, the movie does contain some strong connective tissue to the video game, establishing it not as a remake or reboot but perhaps a prequel or sidequel. Here are the Easter eggs found in “Until Dawn” that connect the film to the game, elements that don’t just act as sly nods for fans but also raise some intriguing questions about expanding the game’s universe.

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The first of the two major Easter eggs in “Until Dawn” is the single shared plot point between the movie and the game, which is the involvement of the mythical creature known as the Wendigo. In real-world mythology, the Wendigo derives from Algonquian folklore and has been depicted in various ways, from an evil spirit that possesses humans to a werewolf-like creature that can shapeshift. Generally, the Wendigo is a creature that indulges in cannibalism, and it’s precisely this aspect that “Until Dawn”, the video game, uses for its portrayal. In the game, it’s revealed that the remote Blackwood Mountain was once the site of a mining facility which experienced a cave-in back in 1952, trapping survivors there who, upon resorting to cannibalism to survive, found themselves transformed into Wendigos. Not only are the characters in the game threatened by the still-active creatures, but they could find themselves transforming into a Wendigo if they get bitten by one.

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“Until Dawn,” the movie, also features the threat of our protagonists being turned into a Wendigo, however the cause and reason for such is revealed to be different. Although a group of Wendigos roam the grounds of the remote valley in which Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends are trapped, it’s not necessarily their bite or the prospect of cannibalism that could turn the humans into the creatures. Instead, it’s the collective trauma of dying violently and being resurrected by the time loop, which is steadily transforming the survivors into Wendigos, a process that generally takes 13 loops to complete. As an evil witch informs Clover early in the film, the victims either have to survive the night, or they’ll become a part of it.

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It just so happens that turning innocent victims into evil killer Wendigos is all part of the plan for Dr. Hill, an evil psychologist played by Peter Stormare. His character is the only returning figure from the video game, albeit in an intriguingly new form. In the game, Hill only appeared in interstitial moments as a hallucination of the character Josh Washington (Rami Malek), a disturbed man who descended into madness after the loss of his sisters on Blackwood Mountain (one of whom ended up becoming a Wendigo herself). Although it was explained in the game that Hill was indeed Josh’s psychiatrist before the latter decided to try and take revenge for his dead siblings, the Hill seen in the game is wholly a hallucination, which explains why his character can break the fourth wall.

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In “Until Dawn,” the movie, the real Hill appears, albeit in a fashion that indicates that his mercurial nature may be due to some supernatural powers he possesses. First appearing to Clover as a gas station attendant, it’s revealed that Hill is somehow behind the time loop curse that plagues a certain section of land in a remote valley. After an incident where the entire town he used to practice in got swallowed up by a natural disaster, Hill stumbled upon the phenomenon where ordinary human beings could be transformed into Wendigos when exposed to enough trauma in a concentrated period of time, hence his luring of subjects to experiment on. It’s not entirely clear whether Hill controls the time loops (not to mention the monsters that show up to menace the victims after each reset) or if something else does and Hill is merely capitalizing on the opportunity to study the results. Whatever the case, his appearance presents a lot of theories and speculations about both his character, when “Until Dawn” the movie takes place, and what it all means to the larger narrative of the franchise.

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During her final confrontation with Dr. Hill in his dilapidated office, Clover spots some curious documents scattered across Hill’s desk. Among these documents are some patient files, and it seems that the file for Josh is among them. This of course tracks with Hill’s appearance in the game, as Josh was established as one of his patients. Essentially, this Easter egg mainly establishes that this Dr. Hill is the same Dr. Hill from the video game.

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However, the inclusion only continues to fuel the debate surrounding Hill and the time period of the movie itself. For one thing, the file next to Josh’s appears to be that of a blonde woman, and it’s not clear whether the file belongs to one of Josh’s sisters or that of Sam Giddings (Hayden Panettiere) from the video game. For another, if we’re to take the release dates of the game and the movie at face value, then “Until Dawn” the movie would be taking place about 10 years after the events of the video game. Yet the final scene of the film raises some questions about that, especially coupled with the appearance of these files. Are they patients that Hill has already “treated,” or ones that he’s about to?

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Although Clover defeats Dr. Hill via a sip of the contaminated spontaneous combustion water, and she, along with her four friends, are subsequently able to survive until dawn and escape the cursed valley, it’s not clear whether Hill might also be subject to resurrection himself. The film’s final shot indicates that he might be, for while we don’t necessarily see Hill alive again, we see his bank of CCTV monitors switch from the welcome center and surrounding forest areas of the film to a certain snowy lodge as a car pulls up in front of it.

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This shot appears to reference the central location of the “Until Dawn” video game, namely the lodge on Blackwood Mountain where Josh, Sam, and the other characters play out their drama. It also explains why one of the areas that Clover and her friends discover appears to be an old mine, which would indicate that the entire movie has taken place in the same general location as the video game. This leads to the same question raised earlier, which is whether “Until Dawn” the movie is actually a prequel to the video game, or whether we’re seeing a new group of victims show up at the lodge location for Hill to experiment on.

In any case, these Easter eggs provide a lot of food for thought for fans of both the video game and the movie, and give any future “Until Dawn” projects a lot of creative leeway should a new movie, or game, or both occur. Like both the game and the movie, there are a myriad of possibilities that could be true. When it comes to getting some concrete answers, I suppose we’ll all just have to survive a little longer for now.

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