Mad Max: Fury Road - 20 Easter Eggs, In-Jokes & References

There's actually also another nod back to Hugh Keays-Byrne's appearance in the first Mad Max outing during one of Max's waking nightmares about his slain family. During the hallucination there's a brief glimpse of a familiar looking pair of bulging eyes, which is lifted directly out of the first film, from Toecutter's death sequence.

It's clearly a fan-baiting nod to that scene: especially since Miller didn't opt for a reshoot that might have improved the effects somewhat.

It almost feels like Miller is consciously playing around with the classification of the film as neither reboot nor sequel. The director was always keen that his franchise didn't really have too much of an obvious linear timeline, despite the fact that it was released as a trilogy. And his frequent references back to earlier points in the franchise seem like a very provocative jaw jut to anyone attempting to peg this as a pure reboot.