– This episode is one of the few times this season that we see Holly Wheeler, Mike’s and Nancy’s younger sister. People always say the youngest gets away with everything, but with as much as the elder children get away with, Holly has her work cut out for her.

– Hopper and Eleven obviously regret their outbursts, and the chief clearly wants to apologize or say something conciliatory. Instead, he removes a blue bracelet from his wrist, looks at it, puts it back on, and tells El to clean the place up. That bracelet is the blue hairband Sara wore that Hop keeps as a reminder of his daughter. His hesitation takes on all kinds of new meaning in that context.

– Eleven opening the door to the basement (or is that a fruit cellar?) is so out of The Evil Dead, that we were disappointed there wasn’t even a Necronomicon in it.

– While El is searching through the boxes under the floor of the cabin, the flashlight lingers on boxes for New York and Vietnam, giving us glimpses of Hopper’s past formative experiences.

– The bag Nancy brought back from Radio Shack didn’t exactly contain a Walkman, but the fact that her plan to record Owens talking about the activities at Hawkins Lab ties into Bob Newby’s place of work was pretty cool. But why didn’t any of the lab guards search Nancy’s purse? That tape recorder wasn’t exactly miniature!

– Obviously the biggest reference of the episode carries through from one set-up way back at the end of season 1: D’Artagnan is a baby Demogorgon from season 1. And of course this is an exact (if less deadly) replica of the xenomorph’s life cycle in the original Alien. Like the eponymous alien, a creature hatched from an egg and attached to Will’s face. It led to a smaller creature that (much more slowly) has grown into a carniverous monster. It also one-ups the xenomorph by getting the one creature that eluded that monster… the cat.

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 5: “Dig Dug”

– The episode continues the love for vintage Sam Raimi with another shout out to The Evil Dead, as the second image is of a swing aimlessly swaying outside of a lonely house.

– To continue The Evil Dead lovefest, the episode features an iconic horror of vines swarming over a human’s body, albeit the ones on Hopper are less handsy than the ones in the first Evil Dead movie.

– The episode’s most nostalgia-friendly nod is that Sean Astin, Little Mikey from The Goonies all grown up, wonders while staring at the map if X marks the spot. He even says the words “pirate treasure.” If it was anymore on the nose, you wouldn’t be able to breathe.

– Nancy and Jonathan have matching scars, as shippers everywhere had hoped. These came from when they cut their hands in season 1 episode 8, a move designed to lure the Demogorgon.

– Also those matching scars are right out of the novel It where all of the characters are forever linked by a blood oath made via cuts across their palms.

– We also received yet another nod to Poltergeist and The Karate Kid when Eleven communed with mama. This visualization of her origin story also touches again upon her Firestarter influences. Thank you, Stephen King.

– During a rare glimpse into the Sinclair household, Lucas’ dad is reading the newspaper, but wait a minute! That’s the same newspaper we saw in the first episode of Stranger Things 2! Is Mr. Sinclair only just now getting around to reading about Merrill’s Pumpkin Patch and Baby Fae’s Baboon Heart? Busy guy…

– The episode also slyly acknowledges some of the criticisms from the series’ first season where Max dings Lucas’ “story” as derivative. Echoing those who discredit the series’ embrace of nostalgia (looks around this article), Max makes a complaint that falls on deaf ears in regards to Lucas and most viewers.

– Erica Sinclair steals a He-Man action figure from Lucas’ room when she’s trying to get Dustin to heed her “Code Shut Up.” He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ran on television from 1983 until 1985, so Lucas was definitely with the toy trend.

– As Bob Newby begins to recognize Will’s scribblings as a map of Hawkins, one of the landmarks he names is Sattler’s Quarry. That’s where Will’s body was supposedly found in season 1.

– Since his friends aren’t available, Dustin recruits Steve saying, “Do you still have that bat with the nails?” Steve makes good use of the bat, as he did in season 1, but technically, it was Jonathan’s bat. He put it together in the aforementioned season 1 episode 8.

– Murray, the investigative journalist, pours vodkas for Nancy and Jonathan while playing Billie Holliday’s The Lady Sings album. Not an ’80s artist, of course, but the lyrics appropriately say, “She tells her side, nothing to hide / Now the world will know just what the blues is all about.” Sing it, Murray.

– Fans were speculating wildly about the meaning of “Breathe, sunflower, rainbow,” and the rest of the mysterious words of Terry Ives that showed up in a promo. Finally, the answers come as a clever clue hidden in the destroyed mind of a mother who never gave up.

– Hopper’s continued refusal to leave his hat behind, no matter the danger, is more than a little reminiscent of Indiana Jones.

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 6: “The Spy”

– The episode begins with a play-by-play recreation of the middle of The Exorcist with Joyce Byers all but becoming Ellen Burstyn while demanding from a room full of learned doctors just what the hell is wrong with her child. She even paraphrases the grim scene as her son goes closer and closer to Linda Blair territory.

– The episode also harkens back once more to Ridley Scott’s Alien with a gang of would-be heroes discovering the beast they chase has shed its skin and grown bigger in a matter of hours. The next time they see it, it will be near full grown in size. It also relays Aliens once more, with there being confirmation that the lone beastie from the first movie/season, is one of many.

– Also while on the hunt for the “baby” Demogorgon, Steve and Dustin walk on the Stand By Me tracks from season 1… but with the added twist of throwing chum for their dangerous prey, just as the heroes did in Jaws.

– In this episode, it is once again relayed that Bob wants to move Joyce and her boys to Maine. But that is probably not a great idea either since Stranger Things borrows heavily from Stephen King, who has a penchant for setting stories there.

– When Jonathan and Nancy spend a romantic evening in crazy conspiracy theorist’s house, they communicate their will-they-or-won’t they romance to World War II era music that scores their eventual union. This is a subtle echoing of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Thank you to Chad Pittman for pointing this one out!

– There are a couple of interesting song choices. The first is “Hammer to Fall” by Queen, which plays as Steve and Dustin prepare to lure Dart out of the cellar. The lyrics are a battle call with built in advice for the erstwhile pet: “Just surrender and it won’t hurt at all / You just got time to say your prayers / While you’re waiting for the hammer to—hammer to fall.” Also note that Steve has better taste in music than that jackass, Billy.

– The other appropriate song choice comes when Billy is lifting waits and generally looking bad ass. It’s not so much that Ratt’s “Round and Round” has symbolic lyrics; it’s just that any hair band that accompanies Billy’s mullet, a hairstyle that, like Billy himself, attempts to dethrone Steve as king of hair, provides the perfect soundtrack for this musclebound jock.

– You know who else has better taste in music than Billy? Murray Bauman, who has a clearly visible MC5 poster in his paranoid bunker/living quarters.

– When Paul Reiser as Dr. Owens watched the deaths of his soldiers on the security monitors, it was hard not to be reminded of his character Burke from Aliens, a movie the kids won’t see for a couple years, as it came out in 1986. Also worth noting is that in this episode Owens literally quotes Reiser’s Burke character by telling Joyce she “needs to trust me” in almost the exact same inflection Reiser said it to Ellen Ripley in the James Cameron sequel.

– Also the radar and the beeping is straight out of Aliens.

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 7: “The Lost Sister”

– As El makes her way to Chicago, the appropriately titled “Runaway” by Bon Jovi plays in the background. Apparently, the Stranger Things music supervisor wanted to make sure we got the message because Runaways’ “Dead End Justice” is also part of the soundtrack. So yeah, El ran away.

Also, El’s whole “girl getting off the bus in the scary city” thing kinda mirrors Guns n’ Roses’ video for “Welcome to the Jungle.”

– As she navigates the big city, El bumps into a well-dressed man who unapologetically tells her to watch it, and El calls him a “mouth-breather.” This insult hearkens back to season 1 when the boys taught her this term when they were getting bullied by Troy and his cronies.

– Kali and her gang resemble Grant Morrison’s Invisibles quite a bit. Aside from the fact that the overall vibe of Stranger Things in general feels like it takes place adjacent to Morrison’s famed 1990s comic book counterculture masterwork (which, among other things, dealt with shadowy government agencies inviting Cthulu-esque extradimensional malevolent entities into our world), there are a few direct references to the concepts and characters themselves in this episode.

There’s prominent BARBELITH graffiti in the gang’s headquarters, which references one of the recurring themes of The Invisibles, a mysterious supernatural planetary body that appears to characters in important moments, almost like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

You can also spot (more than once) “King Mob” graffiti. King Mob was the leader of The Invisibles and the stand-in for Morrison himself. He’s like if James Bond was a spiritualist magician psychic with the fashion sense of a rock n’ roll star and that only scratches the surface.

“O’Bedlam” is another piece of graffiti, referencing Tom O’Bedlam, another member of the team.

The girl with the wild hair who is part of Kali’s crew also resembles Ragged Robin from The Invisibles quite a bit.

– This entire episode genuinely plays like a variation on a subplot from the fabled “Dark Phoenix Saga” from X-Men lore (note: not the movies). This is intentional as season 1 of Stranger Things also made reference to X-Men #134, which was part of the “Dark Phoenix Saga.” And a crucial aspect of that storyline featured Jean Grey, aka the Phoenix, falling in with the wrong crowd after her boyfriend (Scott Summers) appeared to be moving on from her with another (the mutant Dazzler). She was seduced by a psychic named Emma Frost into seeing things that were not there and to give into murderous, darker impulses. Also like traditional X-Men stories, this episode is about embracing how individual differences are a gift, not a curse to be hidden in a closet.

– Similarly, Stranger Things more specifically borrows from X-Men films, particularly X-Men: First Class, where Charles Xavier uses his psychic powers to cause him and his compatriots to appear invisible to Soviet soldiers, not unlike the oblivious Chicago cops at the end of this hour.

– El tells Kali she’s been with Hopper for 327 days, and the day before, Halloween, she had yelled at the chief for saying “soon” on day 21, day 205, and now on day 326. That puts her rescue by Hopper at Dec. 10, 1983. So there’s that for what it’s worth.

– When she gets a makeover from Kali’s gang, it’s described as “bitchin’,” another valley girl slang term from the ’80s, similar to “totally tubular” mentioned in an earlier episode.

– El is seen watching an episode of Punky Brewster, which had just begun its first season in September of 1984, so she was watching an early episode. Not only is the show about a young girl being adopted by a foster family (in Chicago, no less); she’s also watching an episode in which Punky relates a bad dream about doctors. Very portentous for an episode that features a visit by Matthew Modine’s Dr. Brenner. We’ll overlook the fact that that particular episode of Punky Brewster aired on Nov. 4, 1984, 3 days later (see date reference above). Close enough!

– Pruitt Taylor Vince appears as Ray, the technician who sent 450 volts of electricity into Terry Ives brain, disabling her for life. Not really an easter egg, just cool casting.

– You can also spot graffiti that says “So Long and Thanks” in the warehouse, a reference, of course, to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy mythos.

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 8: “The Mind Flayer”

– The episode begins in broad “zombie apocalypse” styled strokes as the Demodogs attack the facilities. But it more specificially borrows from the 1990s Steven Spielberg classic, Jurassic Park. With the power out and the need to turn on both the power and open the locks, poor Bob is sent to his doom like a latter day Samuel L. Jackson to the breakers.

– Speaking of Demodogs, the critters get rebranded just that by Dustin. Perhaps he still has Ghostbusters on the brain, as once the word “dog” is thrown out, they suddenly start to resemble Zuul a lot more. Like the Demodogs, Zuul was a canine servant of a greater evil named Gozer in that 1984 classic. Gozer and Zuul also had emmisaries in the guise of a possessed Dana Barrett (the Gatekeeper) and Louis Tully (the Keymaster). This is not unlike Will’s current predicament.

– Will also takes a step closer to William Friedkin’s classic The Exorcist. In that film, just as a priest was losing his faith, he was both horrified and galvanized by the young Regan speaking to him through her possessed body’s flesh, spelling the desperate words, “Help me.” Will likewise communicated by tapping Morse code while a voice of pure evil lied through his own teeth.

– When the Mind Flayer’s vision began sweeping across the land toward Will Byers, it more than a little resembled the “Force” effect from Sam Raimi’s oft-cited The Evil Dead.

– Yet while the zombie-like death of Bob could be attributed to the influence of any George A. Romero movie (or its knockoffs), the scene of all the characters trapped inside the house with monsters threatening to come through the windows or walls is straight out of the one that started it all… Night of the Living Dead (1968).

– The sound of the alarm in the Hawkins Lab is also very similar to the one used by Weyland-Yutani ships, beginning in Ridley Scott’s Alien.

– As mentioned before, hard rock suits scenes with Billy in them, and as he primps in the mirror to go out, Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen” from their incredible debut album Kill ‘Em All (which you can see a poster of on the wall) plays as his soundtrack. Besides the hair connection, though, the song’s title and its lyrics speak of an apocalypse that seems nigh elsewhere in this episode. It’s also the first good song we ever see Billy listening to, perhaps foreshadowing that he isn’t completely irredeemable.

– Bob has to reboot the security system at Hawkins Lab using a manual override written in BASIC. The concept might be Hollywood techno-mumbo-jumbo, but the BASIC programming language definitely would have been part of most microcomputers, which were beginning to become widespread at this time, especially in government facilities.

– As with the Demogorgon in season 1, the humongous shadow beast gets a name from D&D in this episode: the Mind Flayer. The boys (especially Dustin) are great at coming up with names. The Mind Flayer was known for enslaving intelligent beings with their psionic powers. Sounds about right.

– Among the reminiscences Will’s friends and family pepper him with to distract the presence that occupies his mind, Jonathan talks about the day their father left, which was the same day they began construction of Castle Byers. The “castle,” of course, was the structure in which Will took shelter during most of season 1.

– Morse code returns as Will, who’s trapped in his own body, communicates a message to his friends and family: “Close gate!” In the background, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by The Clash plays, the anthem he and his brother, Jonathan, share in season 1.

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 9: “The Gate”

– The Exorcist comparisons were taken to their most extreme with Will having a demonic entity-like creature expelled from his body while tied to a bed. But even before his flesh began to change colors to blackness, there are subtler nods here too, like Joyce coming into Will’s bedroom and noticing the window open and feeling a chill, much like Regan’s mother on the night that her possessed daughter took a life.

– The Alien comparisons were also heightened with the “brain” of the Mind Flayer hive mind looking an awful lot like the shape of the xenomorph’s head, which was of course designed by H.R. Giger.

– Eleven being able to shut the barrier between our world and the Upside-Down, right down to the choice of fiery red to highlight the superheroic act, again underscores similarities between the character and the X-Men‘s Jean Grey / Phoenix anti-heroine. She even flies.

– Mrs. Wheeler was definitely primed for Billy’s seductive visit by reading one of Johanna Lindsey’s romance novels in her Southern Series while in the tub. Lindsey cranked out a bunch of these books, some with Fabio, a famous male model from the ’80s (with Billy-esque fabulous blond hair and muscles), on the cover.

– The Snow Ball dance is of course an overdue nod to a setup from the end of season 1 where Mike invited Eleven to accompany him to this dance as his date. Alas, she could not make it due to getting sucked into the Upside-Down and whatnot. But 1984 proved to be a very good year for the pair, indeed.

– The blue bracelet El is wearing as she dances with Mike may look familiar. It’s the one Hopper has been wearing since his daughter Sara died. It was her hairband that he started wearing when she lost her golden tresses to chemotherapy. The fact that El is now wearing the keepsake means Hopper has fully embraced the idea of starting a new family with El without replacing the one he lost. A very touching visual!