Lost: 20 Easter Eggs, In-Jokes And References You Must See

Lost... and found. For your nerdy pleasure.

Though there seems to be a general agreement that Lost started to - excuse the pun - "lose" its way in later years, there's no denying that - across its ambitious, exciting and even frustrating run - it cemented itself as one of the most influential TV shows ever made. After all, J.J. Abrams' island-based show marked the point at which the lines between television and the cinema began to blur (case in point: its explosive pilot episode). The medium began to expand and innovate with Lost, paving the way for what is now considered by many to be the "Golden Age of Television." As a show, Lost often felt like a crazy hodgepodge of countless movies, TV shows and books - a kind of spiralling sci-fi epic that played homage to everything and anything that inspired it. As a result, Lost ensured a narrative that could go pretty much anywhere, which was - at once - its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. Still, one of the things that the show cannot be faulted for is its insane amount of references to stuff. That's right: Lost was the work of total nerds, and - as you'd expect from total nerds - there are easter eggs, in-jokes and references to be discovered in every nook and cranny of the show's timeline. Whilst some are obvious (Hurley and The Empire Strikes Back, for example), there are others that are a little more subtle. And it's the subtle ones that we've chosen to focus on for this article: twenty of which that you absolutely must see, such as...

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Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.