Jaws: 9 Easters Eggs You Never Noticed
7. The Shark From Jaws And The Truck From Duel Share The Same Roar
When the shark is destroyed at the end of Jaws some people might wonder why there's a muffled roaring sound heard faintly in the background. This is actually a nod to Spielberg's first film Duel, where that film's monstrous killer truck makes the exact same roaring noise as it plummets off a cliff in the climax.
Duel is a gritty thriller about a salesman who is stalked relentlessly by the unseen driver of a monstrous truck. And, years later, when Spielberg was offered Jaws he saw the immediate parallels between the two stories. They both about unstoppable leviathans that prey on ordinary people.
Spielberg felt that Jaws was in essence a sequel to Duel, and in post he decided to add the roaring effect - lifted from the 1950s B-movie Creature From The Black Lagoon - to the shark dying as a way to link them together. It was also his way of thanking Duel for giving him a film-making career.