8 Horror Movies You Didn't Know Were Connected

8. Slither And The Thing

Both containing parasites that devolve humans into disgusting, fleshy masses, Slither and The Thing share some thematic similarities. Incidentally, they also share one key narrative point: they both contain R. J. MacReady.

MacReady is the protagonist of the research mission undertaken in The Thing; the key hero facing up against an alien invasion that is slowly but surely turning his crew against him. At the end of the movie, MacReady's fate is uncertain - he's left with a morally ambiguous Childs watching their facility burn down in the middle of the freezing Antarctic.

It seems that James Gunn wanted to have some fun with John Carpenter's movie, including the R. J. MacReady auctioneers and funeral home in a sly reference to Slither's infamous inspiration.

In this universe, we can assume MacReady didn't survive and has a lovely funeral home named after him. Or if he did, he's taken up a new line of work investigating potential parasite infections, since neither the living nor the corpses of The Thing can be trusted as shown in the gnarly defibrillation scene.

It'd somewhat make sense either way considering the amount of death that happened on their expedition, to be fair.