Red Dead Redemption 2: 18 Easter Eggs And References You Totally Missed
15. The Assassination Of Jesse James
Rockstar
Although the western genre had all but dissipated entirely by the time the eighties came around, it managed to mount a resurgence in the following two decades, so much so that - today - plenty of brilliant modern westerns are released every year.
One of the most notable contributions to the genre this side of 2000 is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which starred Brad Pitt as the eponymous real-life figure. There's a scene in the film where James and his gang stage a train robbery and, in Red Dead Redemption 2, there's a scene framed exactly like it.
Early on in Chapter 2, Arthur bands together with John and Sean to rob a train passing through West Elizabeth. They stop it in their tracks by blocking its path, much the same way James does in the Andrew Dominik film, which had Roger Deakins working behind the scenes as cinematographer.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
