9 Movie Endings That Oddly Reference Other Things
Hurley's cameo in The Wedding Ringer is truly, truly bizarre.
Perhaps the most important part of any movie is the ending - last impressions count for a lot, and an ending that doesn't stick the landing can risk leaving audiences with a sour taste in their mouths.
Great endings can be many things - shocking, hilarious, upsetting, uplifting, or just downright weird. The latter is certainly true in the case of these 10 movies, which included some truly peculiar references hidden in plain sight.
Whether nodding towards obscure movies the target audience has never even heard of, to classic TV shows totally out of nowhere, and everything else in-between, these references came across as incredibly strange even if you knew the context.
One can sense the filmmakers giggling to themselves at what they tried to sneak past audiences, and whether the references ultimately worked for you or not, they represent some of the strangest nods to wider pop-culture you're likely to see in any movie.
As much as most movie endings try to keep the viewer's focus on the story and characters at hand, these films instead tried to distract them with oddball shoutouts to other things...
9. Lorenzo's Oil - Paul
The villain of cult fave sci-fi comedy Paul appears to be Secret Service agent Zoil (Jason Bateman), who at the end of the movie reveals that he's actually been working with the titular alien (Seth Rogen) all along.
Better still, he tells Graeme and Clive (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) to call him by his first name, Lorenzo.
After a beat, the pair realise his name is "Lorenzo Zoil," a punny nod to the Oscar-nominated 1992 drama Lorenzo's Oil, starring Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon.
Considering the absurdly limited overlap between those inclined to watch Paul and those who are even aware of Lorenzo's Oil, it's an incredibly off-key reference doubtless lost on a solid 90% of people watching.
Given that there's no clear link between the two movies either, it seems all the more bafflingly random it was Nick Frost's idea, naming the character Zoil throughout the film for sake of a head-scratching 10-second payoff at the end.