From Freddy's glove in Evil Dead 2 to pretty much everything in Scream, horror movies have a long history of Easter eggs, cameos, and meta-self-reference. And in Andy Muschietti's IT Chapter Two, that spirit is alive and well in a film that's as much a love-letter to IT and Stephen King as it is an epic followup to the 2017 horror movie sensation.

The first film had a few book callouts for fans to enjoy, but with his sequel, Muschietti has taken things to the next level. "In every corner, there’s an Easter egg," the filmmaker said on set. " I wasn’t in an Easter egg mode when I made the first one. I just wanted to make a movie. Now, I’m more relaxed. There might be too many.”

Too many? We'll leave that to you to decide, but there's no denying this is a film that wears its love of the Stephen King universe (and movies in general) on its sleeve. Which means there are a whole heck of a lot of Easter eggs, cameos, references, and callbacks. We've caught a whole heck of a lot of them, but there's no doubt there are more to be discovered with each new watch, so sound off with your favorites we missed in the comments below.

Callbacks

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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line

Judith

During the Losers' final confrontation with It, the creature mimics the end of the first film, rapidly jumping through his glamours in an attempt to frighten them off. Naturally, we see some of the figures that tormented the Losers he's fighting, but we also see Judith -- the woman from the painting that attacked Stan in the first film -- despite the fact that Stan isn't there. It's a nice nod to his character's continued impact, even after his death.

"Gazebos"

Ah, Gazebos. Eddie's hyper-fastidious obsession with health and germs paid off in one of the film's best punchlines in IT, when the young hypochondriac realized the medications his mother kept him on his whole life were nothing but placebos. But when he finally confronts his mother, Eddie screams "You know what these are? They're gazebos. They're bullshit!" It's easily one of the biggest laughs in the film, and it was a moment of improv from Jack Dylan Grazer. Such a good moment of improv that the line came back in the second film.

When the Losers Club units in Pennywise's lair beneath the sewers, they enact the Ritual of Chüd in an attempt to defeat It. But what only Mike knows is that the ritual doesn't work, it's only a means to unify the power of belief. When It escapes from the ritual's grasp, It taunts to Losers, telling them the Ritual is nothing but a "gazebo".

"Greywater"

"Have you ever heard of a staph infection?" Another fan-favorite Eddie moment gets a callback when the adult Losers head down into the sewers and Eddie shudders over "greywater". The scene is a nod to Eddie's minor freakout when they first traipse towards the sewers and discover Betty Ripsom's shoe.

New Kids on the Block

In IT, Ben Hanscom, the new kid, just loved New Kids on the Block. It was the source of a few good jokes in the first film, not to mention Beverly's nickname for him, and the NKOTB fandom gets another callout in Chapter Two during Ben's flashback scene.

When Ben returns to Derry High School, he remembers a forgotten encounter with It, when It took Beverly's form and taunted him for his weight, chasing him down the hall with Bev's hair on fire (a rather literal reference to the poem he wrote her.) When Ben hides in his locker, there's a New Kids poster behind him, which turns into Pennywise when the camera cuts back.

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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line

"Where's My Shoe?"

Poor young Betty Ripsom disappeared a few months after Georgie during the terrifying summer of 1989. Her disappearance was the talk of the town when the Losers first ventured into the sewers, where they found a shoe inscribed with her name. But that wasn't the last they saw of her.

When the Losers' headed to the house on 29 Niebolt Street for their first confrontation with It, Bill and Richie were confronted with the "Scary, Very Scary, and Not Scary at All" doors. They immediately run to "Not Scary at All" but when they open the door they hear a whisper that says "Where's my shoe?" until the light comes on and they see Bett Ripsom's severed torso screaming at them. "Where the fuck were her legs?" Richie screams. Turns out they were in Chapter Two. When Richie is once again confronted with the doors, this time with Eddie, he chooses "Very Scary," remembering the first time was a trick, but when he opens the door, they see Betty Ripsom's severed legs skipping towards them.

29 Niebolt

The entire sequence at the Niebolt house in Chapter Two is designed to mirror the first trip to Niebolt in IT. First, the Losers are separated, before reuniting in the kitchen for a shared showdown. In IT, Eddie falls into the kitchen and breaks his arm, where he has his first truly terrifying encounter with It, who crawls out of the fridge and almost eats Eddie before Beverly runs in and stabs Pennywise through the head with a fire poker.

In Chapter Two, it's not Pennywise, but Stan's head that tumbles out of the decrepit fridge, sprouting legs and razor-sharp teeth and charging on Richie. In the same spot where he had his traumatic childhood encounter, Eddie freezes, leaving Richie and Bill to fight off the stan-spider, until Ben stabs it through the head -- a lot. Seeing Eddie's terror, Beverly gives him her fire poker telling him it kills monsters, "if you believe it does."

Beep Beep Richie

A famed line from King's book, Beep Beep Richie doesn't get a lot of play in either of the IT films, but Muschietti made sure to drop it in once during each movie. During the book and the original mini-series "Beep Beep Richie" is said all the time by the Losers Club, who use it as a friendly phrase to tell the Trashmouth it's time to shut up.  In IT, it's Pennywise who says when Richie is trapped in the clown room at Niebolt. In Chapter Two, it's Bev who says it to Richie when they return to the Niebolt house.

Victoria and Georgia

Sweet little Victoria Fuller is thrust into the Georgie role in IT Chapter Two, when Pennywise lures her under the bleachers with the promise of friendship. In a parallel to the Georgie scene, Pennywise is all sweetness and smiles as he coaxes the children towards him, promising fun and friendship, and slowly shifts into a nightmare as they get closer. There's even a specific dialogue callback when Pennywise tells Victoria he can blow her birthmark away. In IT, the killer clown told Georgie "the whole circus blew away."

Cameos

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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line

The Warner Bros. Lot

If you're wondering how many cameos there are in IT Chapter Two, even the studio got one. When we meet Audra on the set of the film Bill wrote, he walks through the Warner Bros. lot, which is also home to sister studio and IT production company New Line Cinema, a longtime home to horror hits known affectionately called the "The house that Freddy built" after one Mr. Freddy Kruger.

Peter Bogdonavich

The two-time Oscar-nominated director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon has a delightful and extremely surprising cameo when he pops up as the director of Bill's movie. “It was very playful, like Peter Bogdanovich comes from the sky and just drops from above, like some sort of god, and then he goes back to the cloud,” Muschietti told USA Today.

Bogdonavich doesn't have any ties to King or IT, in fact Muschietti says he "hates horror movies," but the filmmakers are friends and it turns out, Bogdonavich asked for the Cameo. Muschietti explained,  “He said, ‘You don't happen to have a role for an old director like me, do you?’ And I said: ‘You know what? I do.’ ”

Andy Muschietti 

Muschietti also found a little cameo moment for himself, though his is a much quicker, blink and you'll miss it moment. You can see the director doing his shopping in the background when Eddie returns to the pharmacy.

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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line

Barbara Muschietti

The IT and IT Chapter 2 producer also has very brief cameo in the film. You can see her sitting against a tree when Ben returns to Derry High School.

Brandon Crane

The actor who played young Ben in the 1990 IT miniseries is the only original actor to return for the new film adaptation. You can see him at the beginning of the film, on Ben's video conference call.

Jason Fuchs

When screenwriter Gary Dauberman had to move his focus to directing Annabelle Comes Home, Warner Bros. and Muschietti brought in Wonder Woman writer Jason Fuchs to help bring IT Chapter Two to the finish line. The writer also ended up with a bit part in the film: he plays Richie's manager, who we see calming him down before he goes on stage at the start of the film.

Stephen King

And of course, the big one. The man himself gets a prize cameo role as the owner of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes; the pawnshop where Bill finds his trusty old bike Silver. The pawnshop is also seen in the books. King's got the longest cameo in the film, and well deserved, I'd say, and he's absolutely a hoot in the role of a curmudgeonly Mainer. He's also seen holding a mug for C.A. Independiente, an Argentine sports club of which Muschietti is a fan.

Bonus Trivia: Guillermo Del Toro, who produced the Muschiettis' first film Mama, was supposed to have a cameo but the timing didn't work out. He would have played the janitor in Ben's flashback scene at the high school.

Easter Eggs and References

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Image via New Line, Warner Bros.

Tim Curry's Pennywise

Keeping up with the tradition from the first film, eagle-eyed viewers can spot a version of Tim Curry's Pennywise hiding in plain sight. In the first film, the bozo-inspired killer clown popped up as one of the dolls in Richie's clown room. In the sequel, he's seen at the Derry Canal Days Festival when bill follows Dean into the Hall of Mirrors. First, he walks through a room full of swinging clowns (see above). Those swinging clown pins are designed after Pennywise's costume in the miniseries.

Bill Sucks at Endings

One of the film's more delightful meta jokes is the repeated sentiment that Bill, a great writer, is just terrible at endings. His director says it, his wife says it, even Beverly says it. The joke is a reference to King's reputation for delivering sub-par endings to great novels. Whether you agree with that sentiment is entirely up to you (I think he's got as good a batting average anyone with his prolific resume could ask for, and let it be known that the ending to The Dark Tower is Good Actually,) but the real gem of the bit comes with King himself gets in on the joke, ribbing Bill for his bad endings during his cameo.

Maturin

By and large, IT Chapter Two skips the most insane cosmic beats of King's novel, which means we don't get to see the great Turtle in action. But that doesn't mean Maturin is totally left out in the cold. In the book, the Turtle is said to have thrown up our known universe in a fit of indigestion and he guides the Losers in their battle against Pennywise. As wit IT, which made sure to squeeze some turtles in the background, you can spy a little turtle sculpture on the teacher's desk when Ben is in school. But the big name-drop comes when Mike shows Bill the Ritual of Chüd vision, giving him what he calls "Maturin" root that allows Bill to see the truth.

You've Got Mail

During Richie's return to the arcade, a You've Got Mail poster can be seen in the background and it's kind of a two-for-one Easter egg. First, it connects the themes of Richie's sexuality to the opening scene, during which Adrian Mellon taunted his bigotted attackers that Meg Ryan wants her wig back. Richie also sees Mellon handing him is own funeral invitation at the park, so there's no doubt that Muschietti wanted to tie their stories together. But the movie poster also has some distinct markings -- it's ripped in a way that spells "IT".

Bob Gray

Unless you read the book, you might be pretty confused by the scene that shows Pennywise as a man without his clown makeup -- especially since the film already established his true form is a bunch of alien space lights that crash-landed on earth. The sequence during Bev's return to her childhood apartment brings her to Mrs. Kersh, who talks about her father, Pennywise the Dancing Clown? Soooo wtf? The sequence is a nod to Bob Gray, another alias, like Pennywise, that It uses in the book. The connection between It, Bob Gray, and Pennywise is pretty cryptic in the books and Muschietti wanted to keep it that way in the film.

Speaking with Collider, the filmmaker explained: "It's definitely a nod for the readers regarding Bob Gray. But it's also a little step towards the backstory that doesn't intend to solve anything. But people want to sometimes know more. If you give them too much, then they are disappointed. There is something so great about the way that Stephen King manages that mystery. He gives you little crumbles here and there, but he never actually fully explains who Bob Gray is, how Bob Gray is Pennywise."

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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line

Mommy Issues

Big yikes here, folks. We all know that Eddie Kaspbrak has some full-tilt Freudian-level mommy issues, and just like in the book, the film makes a point that Eddie essentially married his mother -- an overweight, overbearing woman who suffocates and manipulates him by preying on his anxieties. Eddie even accidentally calls his wife Myra "Mommy" when he's in a daze from Mike's call, but Muschietti really went there with the casting. If you're wondering why Eddie's brief interaction was so powerfully uncomfortable -- his wife is played by Molly Atkinson, the same actress who plays his mother Sonia.

Branson Buddinger

As Mike is packing in his life at the library and preparing to leave Derry for good, we see a book written by Branson Buddinger, a minor character in King's novel who was a Derry historian like Mike and ended up hanging himself, though his death was ultimately covered up as an accident. Mike learns about Buddinger's history from the head librarian, who says Buddinger was "a damned sloppy researcher and afflicted with a terminal boner...but when it came to Derry his heart was in the right place. He got most of the fact wrong, but he got them wrong with feeling."

"Fast Enough to Beat the Devil" / “I Am the Eater of Worlds”

IT Chapter Two's script finds plenty of room for direct quotes from King's novel. There are quite a few in Beverly's spooky encounter with Mrs. Kersh, but there are two big ones that stood out. The first comes during King's cameo at Secondhand Rose, when Bill tells him that Silver was "fast enough to beat the devil" -- a direct reference to a description used repeatedly without King's novel, culminating in the epilogue subtitled "Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil." The fact that the line is delivered to King himself just makes it that much more thrilling.

The second standout quote comes during the big standoff with Pennywise in the final act, when he tells the Losers, "I am the eater of worlds." This is another direct quote from the book. In King's novel, it happens during the first Ritual of Chüd battle between Bill and Pennywise. To which Bill replies, "That so? Well, you've just had your last meal sister." But it's also a favorite line from the 1990 miniseries, where Tim Curry's Pennywise tells the Losers, "I am the eater of worlds... and children." That makes it the rare three-for-three line that appeared in all three versions.

 "Kiss me Fatboy"

But that's not the only famous line from the miniseries that made it into Muschietti's film. During Ben's flashback at Derry High School, Pennywise taunts him in the form of Beverly and says "Kiss me fatboy!" It's one of the most quoted lines from the 1990 miniseries adaptation, but it's not a line from the book. In IT Chapter Two, Pennywise follows that line up with "Kiss me as if its the last time," a reference to Casablanca.

"Here’s Johnny!"

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Image via Warner Bros.

But the Easter egg quotes don't just stick to the world of It, Muschietti made room for one of the most famous lines in the King-verse. Well, kinda. Jack Nicholson's iconic line from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining adaptation doesn't actually appear in the book; it was an improvised line by Nicholson on set. But it's still one of the lines most famously associated with King's work. In IT Chapter Two, Henry Bowers shouts the line while trying to break down the door during Beverly's bloody bathroom nightmare. Coincidentally (or perhaps not, depending on how cynical you are,) Warner Bros.' The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep arrives in theaters later this year.

"You’ve Gotta Be Fucking Kidding!"

Heck, the quote references don't even stick to the King-verse! John Carpenter's The Thing gets some love in Chapter Two during the Niebolt scene, when Stanley's spider-head chases down Bill, Richie, and Eddie. The scene initially invokes Carpenter's horror classic when the legs start sprouting from Stan's head -- a callback to one of The Thing's most celebrated effects sequences -- but then Richie seals the deal when he shouts "You've gotta be fucking kidding!" -- the same line from Carpenter's film.

"You Sloppy Bitch"

This one, ladies and gentlemen, is a Bill Hader original. During the Losers' big finale battle against Pennywise, Richie starts slinging around some real vitriolic trash talk at the killer clown and lands a crowd-pleasing zinger when he calls him a "sloppy bitch." Turns out, that's what Bill Hader calls people when he's feeling competitive; specifically, when he's locked in video gaming rage mode.

Hader described his tendency to throw the phrase sloppy bitch around during a visit to Conan, remembering the first time he used the phrase while playing Golden Eye with an annoying opponent. "I got mad at him and I threw the controller at him and I called him a sloppy bitch, which I've never called anyone in my life… then, a couple of years later I was playing Ping Pong with somebody and he was cheating… and I go, you sloppy bitch!” Now, by the power of Bill Hader, Pennywise is forever a sloppy bitch too.  (h/t to viral twitter for pointing this one out.)

 "No Good Friends. No Bad Friends"

At the end of the film, we see Bill back to work, writing his new novel, which he thinks is going to have a good ending this time around. On his screen, we see a passage of his writing. “No Good friends. No bad friends. only people  you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.” The passage of Bill's writing is actually a passage of Stephen King's writing, pulled from one of Eddie's chapters when he realizes his mom is wrong about the Losers. Considering Bill has long been considered the King stand-in in the story, it's a fitting tribute to give the character some of King's words to finally help him get his ending right. (h/t to the folks on Reddit)

For more on IT: Chapter Two, be sure to check out the links below. 

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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line
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Image via Warner Bros. / New Line
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Image via Warner Bros.