Today, we look at the Only Murders in the Building 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.
Obviously, SPOILERS AHEAD!
TRUE CRIME
The Easter Eggs of the series cleverly opened up with the first episode having literally an Easter Egg hiding at the top of the entrance to the building…
WHO IS TIM KONO?
In this episode, Mabel explains how she and Tim used to play “Hardy Boys” together when they were kids, including investigating “mysteries” around the building with their trusty flashlights, which are shown in this Easter Egg…
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS?
The famed pop singer, Sting, is introduced as a possible murder suspect in this episode, so appropriately enough, a bee flies up to Charles’ window in this Easter Egg…
There’s actually a SECOND Easter Egg in the scene. Here’s the full opening credits for the episode so that you can see the bee fly and see the second Easter Egg right after the bee…
THE STING
We learn the identity of the man in the tie-dyed sweatshirt in this episode (it is Mabel’s old friend, Oscar, who was falsely convicted for murdering his girlfriend years earlier when Tim Kono refused to give him an alibi despite knowing Oscar didn’t do the crime) and the Easter Egg is a tie-dyed moon…
TWIST
Charles and Oliver take Oliver’s car out of storage for the first time in seemingly decades to track Mabel and Oscar and Oliver has one of those hula girls on his dashboard, so the Easter Egg has one of those hula girls in Oscar’s window…
TO PROTECT AND SERVE
We discover that Teddy, the sponsor of the podcast, might be a bad guy when we discover his secret shell company, Angel, Inc., named after his grandmother, so we see a shadow of an angel on the building…
THE BOY FROM 6B
This episode is told from the perspective of Teddy’s deaf son, Theo, and is almost entirely wordless, so the Easter Egg is a collection of Scrabble tiles in Mabel’s window that can be arrange to spell “Silence.”
FAN FICTION
Charles, Oliver and Mabel discover that they have a number of diehard fans out there of the podcast, and the Easter Egg is showing a trio of box fans on the building’s roof to symbolize their new fans…
DOUBLE TIME
We meet Charles’ old stunt double in the episode (played hilariously by Jane Lynch) and the Easter Egg is having two versions of Charles’ distinctive hat in his window…
OPEN AND SHUT
Finally, the season ends with a SECOND resident of the building being murdered, Bunny, and her death is foreshadowed by bunnies appearing on the window curtains…
EDITED TO ADD: Here are all of the Season 2 Only Murders in the Building opening title Easter Eggs.
If you have suggestions for a future Pop Culture Easter Eggs, feel free to drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
What was the second easter egg right after the bee?
A carton of eggs is in Charles’ window, a reference to the omelets he routinely makes and throws out.
In the first episode, tie-dye guy can be seen going up the stairs.
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I also do not see what is after the bee.
Charles has bacon along with his eggs.
There is always a carton of eggs on the counter in Charles apartment, so I wouldn’t call that the Easter egg.
The article really captures how those subtle opening credits hint at each episode’s plot without spoiling anything. Fun to spot on replay. It’s got me looking for hidden patterns elsewhere, which is why I’ve been working through daily pokemon puzzle to keep things interesting.
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Great article! I’m a big fan of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ and it’s fascinating to see all these little Easter eggs from the opening titles collected in one place. The attention to detail is amazing. Thanks for putting this together.
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