Today, we look at all of the Only Murders in the Building Season 5 opening title Easter Eggs.
In Pop Culture Easter Eggs, I share with you pop culture “easter eggs.” An easter egg is a joke/visual gag/homage/in-joke that is hidden in works that you are meant to find (just like an easter egg). They range from the not-so-obscure to the really obscure. So come check ’em all out and enjoy!
The excellent Hulu TV series, Only Murders in the Building, created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman and starring Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, has a brilliant opening title sequence produced by Elastic, the same design firm that produced the iconic Game of Thrones opening credits (among many other credit sequences and other awesome design stuff).
The credits also include Easter Eggs hinting as to the plot of the episode in question. I collected all of the easter eggs for Season 1, all of the easter eggs for Season 2, all of the easter eggs for Season 3, all of the easter eggs for Season 4, and now, here’s Season 5’s easter eggs!
Obviously, SPOILERS AHEAD!
NAIL IN THE COFFIN
The first Easter Egg of Season 5 is Mable having a Stanley cup in her apartment window. She later uses the cup to hold the severed finger in the episode…
AFTER YOU
In the second episode, the main Easter Egg in this Lester-centric flashback episode is a silhouette of Lester overlooking “his” building from the Arcadia’s roof…
But there’s also a BONUS Easter Egg. Each episode has Howard walking a pet, but here, he’s pushing his mother in her wheelchair, as the episode takes place when she was still alive…
RIGOR
Finally, the third episode’s Easter Egg is seeing someone shade in the moon, referencing the classic technique of shading in the page below a missing page of a notebook (or, in this case, a ledger) to read what was on the torn out page.
DIRTY BIRDS
This episode is about bird code names, and so at the start of the credits, we see three birds perched on the entrance of the Arconia…
and at the end of the credits, we see them there, still, at night…
TONGUE TIED
Charles and Sofia (Téa Leoni) go out on a date to a hibachi restaurant, and the waiters toss them shrimp and mushrooms into their mouths. This turns them on, and they end up making out. The easter egg is that when we get to Charles’ window in the building, we see the silhouettes of mushrooms and shrimps being tossed (this could also be possibly tied into the other plot in the episode, where they investigate the Arconia’s trash guy)…
The secondary easter egg is showing Howard walking LESTR (Logic-Engineered Secure Tenant Robot), the robot replacement for the murdered doorman of the Arconia, Lester…
FLATBUSH
Loretta (Meryl Streep) returns to the series, and she helps with the investigation, but does so in a comical “old school private investigator” trench coat. So the easter egg is that the other three main characters are all shown wearing a similar trench coat look..
SILVER ALERT
The gang visits the billionaires at Bash’s mansion, and they are disturbed by his young son, Algernon. Algernon appears throughout the opening credits, being all creepy and stuff…
CUCKOO CHICKS
There are two in this one. First off, in Charles’ apartment window, we see a drink shaker (which plays a pivotal role later in the episode)…
Later, on the roof, we see the silhouettes of Mabel, Loretta, and Detective Williams as they prepare to infilitrate the casino’s Ladies Night…
LESTR
This is a good one, where the whole building appears to have LESTR’s robotic eyes poking out of their respective windows…
THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS
In the end, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are able to prove that the Mayor committed the murder through a recording device hidden in a roulette wheel, so it is only appropriate that the roulette wheel is the easter egg in the finale’s opening credits…
There’s an extra easter egg with Howard walking both his animals AND LESTR…
If you have suggestions for a future Pop Culture Easter Eggs, feel free to drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
