Prey’s Predator 2 Easter Egg Was More Important Than You Thought

2022’s Prey featured a major Predator 2 connection, which was the key to the entire movie.

September 23, 2023, 9:17pm

Set in the Comanche Nation 300 years ago, "Prey" is the story of a young woman, Naru, a fierce and highly skilled warrior. She has been raised in the shadow of some of the most legendary hunters who roam the Great Plains, so when danger threatens her camp, she sets out to protect her people. The prey she stalks, and ultimately confronts, turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technically advanced arsenal, resulting in a vicious and terrifying showdown between the two adversaries. Naru (Amber Midthunder) and the Predator (Dane DeLiegro), shown. (Photo by: David Bukach/20th Century Studios)

Predator fans weren’t sure at first if 2022’s Prey would have any connection to the other movies in the franchise. Since the movie was set hundreds of years before the others, it seemed unlikely that a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch or the events of Shane Black’s The Predator, but there was something. Later on in Prey, Amber Midthunder’s Naru helps a character, Bennett Taylor’s Raphael Adolini, who was hired by the fur trappers as a translator. As a thanks for helping her, he gives her a flintlock pistol and teaches her to use it. This weapon however is instantly recognizable for Predator fans as the Raphael Adolini 1715 pistol, first seen in 1990’s Predator 2.

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With this Easter Egg, Prey not only firmly established itself as being part of the larger Predator mythology, but opened itself up to a major question, how did the gun get BACK into the hands of the Predators so that it would appear at the end of Predator 2? What you may not realize however is that this Predator 2 Easter egg in Prey wasn’t just something to make you do the Leo Pointing meme, it was a major piece of the puzzle for the entire story. Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview for Prey‘s upcoming 4K release, director Dan Trachtenberg told us that the gun was a big component for Prey‘s setting, but also it almost got cut out of the movie multiple times.

“I was figuring out the movie and kind of had all the elements, and the thing that I was after was to have it set as early as possible. I really wanted to be as far away from a ‘Western’ that it could be,” Trachtenberg revealed. “I wasn’t quite sure where exactly to go. And then I realized’ The gun! The gun from Predator 2! It has a date on it!’ And I quickly ran to look up like, ‘wait, what was it again? What was it again?’ And it was like 1715. I was like, alright, that’s our date. That’s when we’re going around that gun, that sort of locked it into place.”

He added, “Anytime someone on the movie didn’t know the reference and in editorial it was like, ‘oh, maybe we should lose that. that would allow us to do X, Y, or Z, or maybe it’s getting in the way and we should just focus on whatever.’ And then I’d say, ‘You’re right, but the gun means….(They’re) like ‘oh wait, what is it?’ I’m like, ‘It’s the end of Predator 2.’ He’s like, ‘oh, oh, that’s cool. You got to keep it. You got to keep it then.’ Anytime anyone lobbied to maybe lose it because they didn’t know what it meant. And we found a way to, as you said, incorporate it. So it’s not really getting in the way, you don’t really need to know, but when you do, you do. And it’s cool.”

Prey will be available on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD October 3, with over two hours of all-new bonus features.