Now this is the kind of ridiculous Star Wars obsession that we fully endorse around here. We love our insane fan theories as much as the next people but what we really love are cold hard facts. Things that can not only be seen, but tested and proven. Real, true-blue Easter eggs. Now, somebody has answered a question about Star Wars: The Force Awakens that we didn’t even know we should have been asking.
If you’ve seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens say, four or five times, you probably noticed little details that you missed on the first couple viewings. One mildly obsessive Tumblr user, who fittingly goes by the user name @youneedapilot noticed something that was written on Poe Dameron’s flight vest and wanted to figure out what it said. And it turns out the rather funny answer is:
PULL TO INFLATE
If you check out the image up top, you’ll see some apparent gibberish below the Resistance logo on the outer vest being worn by Oscar Isaac. That gibberish is actually called Aurebesh and it’s the most common written language in the Star Wars universe. Yeah we know you knew that, but somebody else doesn’t. At first, translation seemed difficult as the symbols did not appear to match the existing alphabet for the language… until it was realized that the letters were actually upside down and backwards, so that the person wearing the vest would be able to read them. Once that breakthrough was made the translation was a simple one
Mystery solved! It’s a goddamn life jacket. We can’t decide what we love more about this. The folks at the Lucasfilm prop department who created the vest in the first place, complete with an accurate warning label, written in a way appropriate for its function, or the noble person who took the time to translate the message so that we could see the level of detail that the prop department had gone to. The mundane level of the message somehow adds to its beauty. If it had been some sort of secret message to fans that wasn’t part of the movie it would have been a fun Easter egg, but little more than that. Now, this is about the people involved in the film trying to create a fully realized world. This is awesome.
Of course, now we have two problems. One is that we now want to go back and find every other written word in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and try to figure out what it says. The other problem is that now all we can think of is Biff Tannen looking at Poe Dameron and saying, "Dork thinks he’s gonna drown."
