Jurassic World Rebirth Easter Eggs You Might’ve Missed, From Jurassic Park to Jaws

You’re gonna need a bigger boat for all these Easter eggs. Jurassic World Rebirth pays homage to seminal Steven Spielberg films like Jaws and the original Jurassic Park, from a Mosasaurus and Spinosaurus sequence set in the dinosaur-filled waters around a tropical island to a tip of the hat to Sam Neill’s paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant. Now that director Gareth Edwards’ “love letter” to the Jurassic franchise has stomped into home theaters, the filmmakers are revealing some of the Easter eggs, references and callouts you might have missed.

When spec ops mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) arrive in South America to charter a boat to Ile Saint-Hubert — an island inhabited by dinosaurs engineered by InGen for the since-closed theme parks — they meet with Captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), an old friend of Zora’s from MARSOC.

Jaws

Van Dijk’s Bar & Grill is littered with references to 1975’s Jaws, production designer James Clyne points out in a new behind-the-scenes featurette. “What I love about set decorating is you’ll get these little stories,” Clyne says. Van Dijk’s, built from the remains of a derelict outdoor café in the middle of a fishing village in Bah Gun, Thailand, houses an eight-foot Mosasaurus jaw and a section of the Orca, the fishing boat captained by Robert Shaw’s Quint in Jaws.

“In the bar, there was Quint’s foot peddle when he’s trying to hunt the shark,” Edwards points out. Adds Clyne, “We mimicked the foot plate and mounted that right onto the bar, and then you get this big payoff at the end of this shark jaw at the end of our bar.”

Adorning the wall is an Arizona license plate with the number 75 and the tag “AMITYISL.” Spielberg grew up in Arizona, and Jaws — released 50 years ago in 1975 — sees Amity Island terrorized by a man-eating shark. Less obvious is the neighboring Wyoming license plate “DLS1,” which is a shoutout to Wyoming-born executive producer Denis L. Stewart (also a co-producer on another Spielberg and Frank Marshall collaboration: 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

Speaking of boats, Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein), chief of security on The Essex, wears a patch with a mongoose and the Latin phrase “opus est major navi.” Translation: “We need a bigger ship.” Or as Roy Scheider’s Chief Brody famously says in Jaws, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Jurassic Park

Kincaid’s boat, The Essex, was once a camouflaged, stripped-down military patrol craft that came in a “drab gray,” so “we wanted to give it some color, give it some jazz.”

“There’s a little something you may notice as far as our paintwork goes: the back maybe 10 percent vehicle itself is painted in this red, and we’ve actually matched that red to a security vehicle you may have seen in Jurassic Park,” Clyne says, referring to the iconic gray and red ’92 Jeep Wranglers. The Jeeps have a “beautiful kind of orange, rusty-red, and we just thought it would be a nice little nod to the original film.”

Another nod to Jurassic Park that flies under the radar? The La Vida Encuentra Su Camino T-shirt that Isabella Delgado (Audrina Miranda) wears, which translates to a famous quote from the 1993 original: “Life finds a way.”

“One of the things that Gareth wanted was [for] her to have a logo T-shirt,” says costume designer Sammy Differ. “It has a pelican on it, and one of the things you see at the end of the first Jurassic Park movie is the pelicans flying. And then under [the pelican], Spanish for ‘life finds a way.’”

Besides that roundabout reference to Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, Rebirth directly mentions Dr. Alan Grant. “I’ve been on digs since I was 12,” Bailey’s Loomis says at one point. “I studied under Alan Grant as a postdoc.” Loomis’ wardrobe includes a shoutout to Grant and Snakewater, Montana, the dig site where we’re introduced to the child-phobic paleontologist and Laura Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler at the beginning of Jurassic Park.

The very same piece of metal attached to Grant’s belt has been handed down to Loomis. “It’s this funny-shaped thing, and it turned out to be a folding shovel,” Differ explains. “So they made one for him, and we made up this story that he had given it to Loomis, and so he wears it as well.”

An even more subtle nod to Neill’s Jurassic Park icon is the scarf that tattooed deck hand Nina (Philippine Velge) wears, only for the blood-stained scarf to wash ashore at the feet of crewmate LeClerc (Bechir Sylvain). You might recognize the print as a nod to the scarf that Sattler wraps around Grant’s neck early on in Jurassic Park.

Star Wars

Early on in Rebirth, Parker-Genix Pharmaceutical rep Martin Krebbs (Rupert Friend) is introduced in the middle of a Manhattan traffic jam caused by “Bronto Billy,” the last- surviving sauropod in North America.

Not only is a close up on Krebbs’ side mirror a clever nod to the “must go faster” T.rex chase from the original Jurassic Park — in which the phrase “objects in mirror are closer than they appear” can be read — but his vehicle’s license plate reads “SC4R1F.” That’s a reference to the tropical planet Scarif introduced in 2015’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which was directed by Edwards. (Also in the scene: a Crichton Middle School bus, which is a homage to Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton.)

A Jurassic Cameo

The NeoJurassic Age was ushered in by 2015’s Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, who also helmed 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion. Although Trevorrow wasn’t involved with the franchise Rebirth, Edwards revealed that the filmmaker makes a secret cameo when Johansson’s Zora and Friend’s Krebbs talk about the potential live-saving drug that, with paleo DNA, could cure heart disease in humans.

“There’s a moment where Scarlett and Rupert are talking right on the water’s edge, and these ferry boats go past. Scarlett and Rupert turn around to the ferry, and there’s a dad and a kid. They wave at them, and they wave back,” Edwards says. “And I found out days later that the guy who waved at them was Colin Trevorrow. He was waving at Scarlett and Rupert, and he had no idea it was us.”

Spielbergian Shoutouts

Rebirth‘s climactic final action sequence takes place in the Qualtech Gas Station on Ile Saint-Hubert as Zora, Loomis, Kincaid, and the Delgados escape from the Mutadons (in a sequence reminiscent of the raptor hide-and-seek in Jurassic Park).

Look closely and you might spot an Amity Island postcard (from Jaws), a yellow raincoat (like the one worn by Sean Astin’s Mikey in The Goonies), a keychain replica flare (a nod to the flare Dr. Grant uses to ward off the T.rex in Jurassic Park), Isla Sorna Pure Costa Rican Spiced Rum (2001’s Spielberg-produced Jurassic Park III is set on Isla Sorna), and movie magazines covered by 1982’s Poltergeist and 1985’s Back to the Future (both produced by Spielberg).

Jurassic World Rebirth is now available to rent or own on digital.