Full spoilers below! If you watched Godzilla vs. Kong all the way through the credits, perhaps waiting on a post-credit scene that never came, you may have noticed within the legalese of the movie’s credits was a nod to a non-kaiju movie… Richard Donner’s 1989 sequel Lethal Weapon 2. Yup, the latest entry in the MonsterVerse credits the hit action-comedy, seemingly because it has a direct homage to the film: After Kong wakes up from losing his big fight with Godzilla, he pops his shoulder/arm back into place by running it into a building, a move clearly riffing on Mel Gibson’s Riggs doing the same thing in Lethal Weapon 2. Also, apparently there were almost MORE Easter eggs.
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“We had to give a thanks to, or a credit to, Lethal Weapon 2,” director Adam Wingard told CinemaBlend. “I can’t remember if it’s still in the film, or if they had to leave it in for legal reasons. But Skarsgard’s character used to drink out of a Lethal Weapon 2 mug in the movie. Actually, he used to wear a Lethal Weapon 2 t-shirt, but it was like a Japanese [version], so you would only know what it said if you spoke Japanese or read Japanese.”
As you can guess from the above, Wingard is apparently obsessed with Lethal Weapon 2. Even Godzilla vs. Kong co-writer Max Borenstein spoke to the outlet about the director’s obsession who said that there were somehow even more references written in to the script (but they didn’t make it in).
“It was a lot with Alex Skarsgard’s character where he was obsessed with the film and he gave this exposition at a bar before Simmons arrived, and it wound up on the cutting room floor,” Borenstein added. “But he talked about sequels and how some sequels, like maybe Godfather 2, people who like 2 [think it’s] actually better than the original. And I think it was was a kind of meta thing having to do with the ambitions of this film and the franchise, fun stuff like that.”
Lethal Weapon 2 wasn’t the only movie being referenced in Godzilla vs. Kong though, it’s got a ton of other Easter eggs and homages to other movies. Naturally the movie has an instance where it riffs on the original King Kong vs. Godzilla (seen in Kong being carried by a series of helicopters) but it also does a great Die Hard riff in the moment when the giant ape leaps from the aircraft carrier to escape Godzilla’s atomic breath.
Didn’t catch any of this? Godzilla vs. Kong is now streaming on HBO Max.
