Thirteen years after the movie’s release, one eagle eyed Star Wars viewer has spotted a very subtle – and awesome – Easter egg in Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Hidden in the bar scene of the second movie in the franchise (or the fifth – depending on how you want to look at it), there appears to be a reference to 1999 Sci-Fi classic The Matrix.
Helpful Imgur user ‘TheRobertissimo’ shared his revelation – explaining how during the bar scene, dodgy dealer Elan Sel’Sabagno attempts to sell Obi Wan Kenobi “Death Sticks” but is quickly swatted away by the Jedi master.
That bit part was played by Matt Doran, whose face you may recognise from The Matrix, in which he plays Mouse, a crew member on the Nebuchadnezzar who designed computer programs to test out Neo’s abilities and had some interesting opinions about the taste of food.
He was especially proud of the fact he designed The Woman In The Red Dress program – a beautiful blonde woman designed to test how easily Neo could be distracted.
Still, an actor playing a bit-part role in another franchise isn’t exactly anything new. It’s only when this Star Wars viewer continued watching that he realised how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Moments after Doran’s appearance in Attack of the Clones, a woman appears briefly in the frame, giving Anakin Skywalker a seductive look. That character is played by the same actress who portrayed The Woman In The Red Dress – Fiona Johnson.
Just a coincidence, surely? Except her character, Hayde Gofai, is described as “a patron of the Outlander Club on Coruscant that often attempted to catch the eye of prospective partners” – you know, pretty much like her character in The Matrix.
Mind blown.
Plus, as if that wasn’t enough, check out the blue and red drinks sitting on the bar at the start of the scene too.
All in all, this was probably just an example of a director proving himself to be a major movie nerd (and why not?), although it does also give George Lucas a pretty good get-out clause for the prequels.
The next time someone quite rightly moans about how shit Episodes I to III are, Lucas can just claim they were all a part of The Matrix and they weren’t real at all.
Sneaky!
