Twisters: Every Major Connection and Nod to the Original Movie

On the surface, Twisters is a sequel to 1996’s Twister in name alone. None of the original characters return for the modern day sequel, none of the new characters are the children or proteges of the old ones, and the stories don’t have any connective tissue. This is the rare legacy sequel that doesn’t feel the need to rehash an old story in order to get people feeling nostalgic. That said, Twisters has more in common with its predecessor than you might realize.

Twisters doesn’t feature any legacy characters, but it does wear its heart on its sleeve when it comes to paying homage to the film that started it all. Throughout the entire movie there are references to Twister in the form of beloved quotes, classic costumes, important scenes, and overall themes.

If you’ve seen Twister a lot over the years, you probably caught on to a lot of these references and nods right away. If you didn’t, we’ve got you covered.

Dorothy V

The only obvious, in-universe connection between Twister and Twisters arrives in the first few minutes of the movie. The opening scene of Twisters is set five years before the rest of the movie, and it shows a field test gone wrong, where the other three members of Kate and Javi’s research group were killed by a massive tornado.

In that scene, Javi is collecting data using none other than a Dorothy, the tool that the scientists in the original Twister spent the entire film trying to get right. The model Javi is using is named Dorothy V, which is a nod to Jo and Bill going through four Dorothy units in the previous movie.

Overpasses Are the Worst

In that same flashback scene at the beginning of Twisters, Kate’s group gets caught in a deadly spot and are forced to try and take shelter under a nearby overpass, even though Kate make sure to note that overpasses are the worst places to be during a tornado. 

While there’s truth to that, it seems to also be a subtle nod to one of the first tornadoes in Twister. When Jo and Bill first reunite and end up chasing down a storm together, they get into an accident and have to survive underneath a small bridge, as it’s the only over available nearby. The two of them survived, but Kate’s crew wasn’t as lucky beneath the overpass 30 years later.

Clothing Choices

There are a lot of clothing choices in Twisters that pay homage to the beloved characters in Twister, with several different scenes featuring looks inspired by Helen Hunt’s Jo Harding and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Dusty. Of all these nods, however, there is one very specific clothing choice that sticks out like a sore thumb.

At one point nearing the third act of Twisters, Kate wears a red shirt with some sort of baseball logo on the front. That exact same design is on featured on the shirt of a boy in the very last scene of Twister, after he emerges from a tornado shelter with his family to examine the damage caused by the storm.

Bill and James Paxton

Original Twister star Bill Paxton passed away back in 2017, but Lee Isaac Chung and the rest of the Twisters team made sure that the late actor was well represented in their sequel.

James Paxton, Bill’s son, has a small role in , appearing about halfway through the movie. He plays an angry customer at a motel, who isn’t exactly responsive to Kate and Tyler’s warnings about an incoming tornado.

Tornado Rivals

Twister pits a ragtag group of storm-obsessed goofballs up against a team of well-funded, uncharismatic jerks. From the very beginning of the movie, it’s clear that these other guys are the villains. Twisters keeps that same type of rivalry going, though the set up is given some changes.

Kate, who is equal parts Jo and Bill Harding, initially returns to Oklahoma to help Javi’s Storm Par group collect data that could be helpful in giving people more advanced warnings for tornadoes. The ragtag group in Twisters, led by Tyler Owens, seem on the surface to be a bunch of attention-seeking YouTubers trying to get rich and famous. But as the film goes on, it’s revealed that the roles are the same as the were in the original, just that the protagonist entered the story on the wrong side.

Storm Par, with all their funding and degrees, aren’t as helpful as Kate initially thought. Tyler’s group, on the other hand, are deeper than they seem.

I’m Not Back

When Bill returns to his old home in Twister to get some divorce papers from Jo, one of the team members welcomes him back into the fold. He’s quick to let them all know, “I’m not back.”

A very similar scene plays out in Twisters. Kate has only agreed to return to Oklahoma for a week to help Javi and she doesn’t plan on staying any longer than that. After their first day of work, he tells her that it’s good to have her back, and she responds with the exact same line that Paxton delivered three decades ago.

Red Pickups

This is a simple one but it’s absolutely worth mentioning. Bill and Jo spent most of Twister chasing tornadoes in the former’s shiny red Dodge pickup. 

The most recognizable vehicle in Twisters is also a red Dodge pickup, though this one has a lot of bells and whistles attached, making it the perfect vehicle for tornado wrangling.

Story Time

There’s a scene in Twister where the crew is having dinner at Jo’s Aunt Meg’s house, several people join in telling Bill’s new fiancee a story about how he was walking around naked near a tornado.

In Twisters, Kate’s mom tells Tyler a story about a much younger Kate hopping out of the bathtub to run outside and watch a storm. The stories were much different, but both focused on the film’s protagonist trying to catch a storm without any clothes on.

The Movies

Arguably the best scene in Twister is set at a drive-in movie theater, where viewers scramble to hide from a tornado as it rips through the screen just as Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining is chopping down his bathroom door. It’s an incredible sequence that manages to blend the horrors of the storm with one of cinema’s all-time great horror movie moments.

Twisters pays homage to the drive-in with its final tornado encounter, as dozens of people directly in the storm’s path take shelter in a local movie theater. The tornado rips through the building and snags the screen in the middle of a planned monster movie marathon.

“We Got Cows.”

The drive-in might have been the best scene in Twister, but the film’s most iconic moment undoubtedly belongs to a cow flying through the air in front of Bill’s truck. From the time Twisters was announced fans were asking if the film would include any cows.

If you went to see Twisters this past weekend and looked for a cow, there’s a good chance you didn’t see one, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Chung recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the film’s VFX team snuck a flying cow into the final tornado, but that it’s “the hardest thing to spot.”