The New Dark Tower Trailer Is Full of Stephen King Easter Eggs

ScoopsMangumJuly 25, 2017

0 2 minutes read

Not a lot of people are fans of Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series, which is a real shame. It’s a complex series of novels that are part western, part horror, part sci-fi, part fantasy, and pure imagination. Filmmakers have been trying to bring it to screen for years, and next month it finally arrives. The marketing has been poor at best, and does little to explain the story to those not already familiar with it. In a nutshell, there is a tower that stands at the center of all existence, and it holds all the different universes together. There is a malignant evil called the Crimson King, who wants to bring the Tower down and cause chaos and destruction to all worlds and then he can rule over them. His top servant is called the Man in Black, and he is also known as Randall Flagg from “The Stand” and he seeks to do his master’s bidding and have some fun along the way. In their way is the last Gunslinger – basically a knight named Roland Deschain who has sworn to protect the tower at all costs. As the series progresses and becomes more complex, King starts to interweave characters from other books and even himself into the plot. The new trailer isn’t made for the average audience member who doesn’t know the books, it’s geared directly to fans of Stephen King. It’s crammed full of Easter Eggs from King’s other works, and I have a breakdown for you.

Watch the 0:30 trailer here. Sorry it’s so small:

Here we have a reference to Pennywise the Clown from “IT.”

We have a photo of the Overlook Hotel from “The Shining.”

Roland Deschain turns a corner and hits his hand against a poster of actress Rita Hayworth which was a crucial part of Andy Dufresne’s escape from prison in The Shawshank Redemption novel. The movie changed it to a poster of Raquel Welch.

That dog is actually Cujo, the dog who became rabid and caused havoc in a small town from the 1992 film with the same name.

There’s no denying that this toy car is a reference to Christine, the 1958 Plymouth Fury from the 1983 adaptation by John Carpenter.

That smiley face is definitely a nod to Mr. Mercedes which is currently being adapted for television.

Here we have the book “Misery’s Child” which is a novel written by author Paul Sheldon, a character from King’s work “Misery.”

This is a portal between worlds and it has the number 1408 scratched into the wall. It’s from the King short story and the John Cusack/Samuel L. Jackson movie.

One of the more obscure Easter Eggs is the number 19 that is scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk. It’s incredibly important in the Dark Tower series – especially in the last 3 books where the Roland and his companions, or Ka-Tet, begin to see the number everywhere they look. It also seems to be a very important number to King, as that number plays a role in many of his books like Cell, Under the Dome, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Christine and others.

This one is REALLY obscure, and I may be reading too much into this, but twins play a role in several of King’s works, including the “Wolves of the Calla” which is the fifth book of the Dark Tower series. We see twin girls in “The Shining”, there were twin girls that torment Carrie in the novel with the same name, and twins are a part of the King novel “The Dark Half.”