The Predator: 14 Easter Eggs & References Explained

14. All The Visual Nods To The Original Predator

To the surprise of approximately nobody, The Predator features a ton of visual and aural callbacks to the original 1987 Predator, the only movie in the franchise everyone can agree is bloody brilliant.

For starters, the new film has an incredibly similar opening sequence, beginning with a spaceship heading towards Earth, mirroring the Predator's trajectory towards us in the 1987 film. The major difference, of course, is that in The Predator, the fugitive alien is fleeing from the pursuing Ultimate Predator.

Then during Quinn's (Boyd Holbrook) mission in Mexico, a man is strung up and brutally disembowelled (is there any other way?), reminiscent of the Green Berets skinned alive near the start of Predator.

Also, at the tail-end of the new film, the Ultimate Predator sets a countdown timer to explode the crashed spaceship, which naturally sounds identical to the iconic countdown timer from the end of the 1987 film, where the defeated Predator initiates a self-destruct sequence.