Glass Onion: How Among Us Foreshadows the Knives Out Mystery

Major spoilers for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery are contained in this article.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery more or less borrows a lot of its set pieces and structure from Among Us, which may sound weird, but stick with me. In the intro of Glass Onion, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc is seen playing the beloved game, Among Us. Part of the reason for this is because the film is set during the early days of the pandemic and he’s stuck inside his home. During this time people were looking for new games to play and Among Us found massive success in mid-2020. Naturally, being a detective, Blanc was drawn to the murder mystery game.

After the opening Among Us is never explicitly seen or mentioned again, but there are an almost absurd amount of parallels. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, so naturally, the similarities are to be expected. However, it gets even more specific than that when you take a closer look.

Most of these parallels don’t actually begin until well into the movie. At around the halfway point, when things start to hit the fan, the power to the whole house goes out. This is a pretty key mechanic in Among Us as it allows killers to kill people without being noticed, sneak away, and perform other nefarious tasks that would otherwise result in them getting caught in the act. That’s exactly what happens in Glass Onion as everyone spreads out in the darkness until Benoit Blanc and Andi regroup outside on the stairs. At this moment, a mystery person, later revealed to be Miles Bron, uses this power outage to shoot Andi. The intent is to kill her, but it doesn’t actually pan out.

All this happens because… Andi is an imposter! Her name is actually Hellen and she is the twin sister of Andi, who died before the movie actually began. Hellen has used the convenience of being a twin to work undercover with Blanc to find out who killed her sister as none of the other guests know Andi is dead, except for whoever killed her. As it would so happen, a book in Hellen’s pocket actually stops the bullet and Blanc pours some hot sauce on her to make her look like she’s bleeding out. This gives Hellen time to search the house to try and find evidence that would point her to who killed her sister.

While she does this, Blanc calls everyone to the main room of the house for an… emergency meeting! Here he stalls for time while Hellen searches the home, but also begins to reveal how he knows that Miles Bron is indeed the killer. He makes his case and unravels it for everyone to hear until they all turn on Miles. However, Miles burns the only tangible piece of evidence that could actually convict him, so Blanc is forced to let the likes of Hellen and the other guests take matters into their own hands and they blow up his home. It may not be shooting him out into outer space like in Among Us, but the movie is set on a private island, so that wouldn’t exactly be feasible.

Whether or not any of this was actually intentional on the part of director Rian Johnson is unknown. However, given the blatant reference to the game in the movie, it seems like Johnson spent some time playing the game during the pandemic and may have inadvertently inspired some moments while he was writing the Knives Out sequel.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is out now on Netflix. What did you think of the movie? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.