It’s hard not to love a good Easter egg. Not only do they demonstrate a particular level of detail-oriented thinking from filmmakers, but they also feel like rewards for fans, both for paying attention, and for understanding the specific reference that is being made. In modern moviemaking we see it all the time from big franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, and Jurassic Park, but now Adam Sandler, who has been a brand unto himself going back to the mid-1990s, has gotten into the game with Hubie Halloween. From top to bottom, the new Netflix feature is filled with references to Sandler’s past comedies.
Some of them are blatant, but others are quicker and more subtle, which is why we felt particularly compelled to put this feature together. You may have felt that you caught all of the Easter eggs watching the movie, but you may have missed one or two, so read through to the end!
SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains some spoilers for Hubie Halloween. If you haven’t watched the film yet, proceed at your own risk!
Hal The Orderly Returns
Despite having what is an uncredited role, Ben Stiller delivers one of the most memorable performances in Happy Gilmore. After all, it’s not every day that you see a character in a comedy act willfully mean to nice senior citizens and rule over them like a slave driver. A little less than 25 years later he’s now back in Hubie Halloween – but he’s no longer a nursing home orderly. Instead, he’s working as an attendant at a psychiatric hospital, and it doesn’t appear that his attitude has adjusted all that much over the last quarter-century. The guy is the same mean sonofabitch that he always was, although this time his regular target is the mentally unwell instead of elderly people.
O’Doyle Rules
Sticking with the subject of bullies, Billy Madison features a full clan of them who needlessly torture classmates and the titular character as he rises through grade school. We don’t know much about the home life for the O’Doyles, but one imagines that things definitely aren’t good, as each of the sons is a mean, spiteful toad. The jerks get their comeuppance at the end of the 1995 comedy when a banana peel causes the family station wagon to careen off a cliff – but apparently it perhaps wasn’t a totally fatal accident, as Hubie Halloween features the return of the O’Doyle tribe. Just like Billy, Hubie is also a victim of teasing from a member of that redheaded genetic line – though there is some peaceful resolution for him at the end of the movie.
Female Lead With Double-V Initials
Following in the footsteps of Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Aniston, Julie Bowen is the latest actress to reunite with Adam Sandler in one of his comedies, having previously played the romantic interest in Happy Gilmore, but the reference being discussed here actually goes a bit deeper than that. In Hubie Halloween, Bowen plays a character named Violet Valentine, which marks a return to Sandler always acting opposite female leads with double-V initials. The Modern Family actress played Virginia Venit in the 1996 sports movie parody, but before her Bridgette Wilson-Sampras played Veronica Vaughn in Billy Madison, and a few years after Fairuza Balk played Vicki Vallencourt in The Waterboy.
Flaming Bag Of Poop
Heh, I called the shit "poop."
Adam Sandler hasn’t exactly demonstrated a great deal of maturity over the years when it comes to his comedy style but we will say this: he has grown from being the guy playing pranks with flaming bags of shit to being the guy who gets flaming bags of shit thrown at him. In Billy Madison, an early scene features Billy and his two friends planting said item on the porch of an elderly neighbor, and in Hubie Halloween that bit is brought back… in reverse. It’s a running gag throughout the movie that residents of Salem, Mass. try to peg Hubie with various items while he is riding around on his bike, and in the first act one of the aforementioned O’Doyles uses Billy’s weapon of choice.
The Danny McGrath Costume
Steve Buscemi is better known for his dramatic work than his comedy, but the guy is perpetually hilarious whenever he teams up with Adam Sandler and proves to be a wonderful scene-stealer. He first did it in Billy Madison playing Danny McGrath – the former tortured classmate whom Billy calls and apologizes to (incidentally getting his name nixed from a “People To Kill” list) – and it’s most definitely true in Hubie Halloween. And the icing on the cake is that there is even a quick reference to Billy Madison via the costume choice for Walter Lambert when Hubie finds him in a deranged state. The blue shirt Walter wears isn’t identical to Danny’s, but it’s most certainly close enough to make us sure that it is meant as a reference.
Steve Buscemi As A Werewolf
Sticking with Steve Buscemi-related Easter eggs, Hubie Halloween doesn’t just feature references to Adam Sandler’s live-action work, as there is even one included linking to the Hotel Transylvania series. Specifically, throughout the new Netflix feature there is a suggestion that Walter Lambert may be a werewolf, as he has a sensitivity to the full moon and is shown with big patches of hair on his arms – and it’s hard to imagine that it isn’t meant as a nod to Genndy Tartakovsky’s animated movies given that the character Buscemi voices, Wayne, is notably a lycanthrope.
The Weird Lady
Billy Madison is a movie filled with amazing, quotable one-liners, and inarguably among the best of them is one that is delivered by actress Gladys O'Connor, who was 92 at the time: “If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.” Sadly O’Connor passed away in 2012 at the amazing age of 108, but Hubie Halloween does a nice job keeping her spirit alive by making us reflect fondly on her work. There’s a character named Dot who is dressed in similar period clothing as O’Connor’s unnamed tour guide character, and it’s hard not to think about her epic line when Dot pops in at one moment to comment on Virginia by saying, “I'm asexual, but that girl's making me hella horny.”
This list of Adam Sandler Easter eggs in Hubie Halloween was derived from just watching the movie a single time, so it wouldn’t exactly surprise us greatly if there are even more that we missed. If you caught one or more that we didn’t, hit the comments section to highlight your discovery, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for our continued coverage!
