Today, we look at all of the Only Murders in the Building Season 3 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 and all of the easter eggs for Season 2, and now here is all of Season 3’s!
Obviously, SPOILERS AHEAD!
THE SHOW MUST…
The first Easter Egg of Season 3 is a series of spotlights on the top of the building before Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd are credited as special guest stars, to denote that the backdrop of Season 3 is a play that most of the characters are involved in…
NOTE: Howard is now shown walking his cat in the opening credits, replacing the sequence from Seasons 1-2 of Bunny walking her animals, now that Bunny is dead. I don’t think that’s an Easter Egg, but rather just a part of the credits now going forward, but it is worth mentioning.
THE BEAT GOES ON
The second Easter Egg comes courtesy of the blue flames (shown on the top of the building, also when the special guest stars are about to be announced. I wonder if that will be a recurring thing this season) of a crème brûlée torch that stalker Gregg (the always great Adrian Martinez), an obsessed fan of murder victim Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd), plans to use on Charles and Mabel because he thinks Charles killed Ben.
GRAB YOUR HANKIES
This is a pretty straightforward one, as the opening title (right when they mention Special Guest Stars for a THIRD time, so that suggests to me that the Easter Eggs will all come at that point of the credits going forward) has a lighthouse in it, and the key moment in the episode if the performance of the song, “Look For the Light,” about a lighthouse…
THE WHITE ROOM
This is a pretty straightforward one, and also the first one that ISN’T in the credits when the special guest star credits come out (but it is also the first episode WITHOUT a special guest star, so that might play a part). In any event, in the episode, Charles (Steve Martin) goes into his “White Room” when he stresses out, and sure enough, a bunch of the rooms in the building are lit up with white light…
AH, LOVE!
This is a tricky one. We follow the pattern of the episodes so far, where the Easter Egg is revealed when the Special Guest Stars are shown (the only exception was an episode without Special Guest Stars). So here, in an episode all about love, the Easter Egg is a pair of heart-shaped clouds…
GHOST LIGHT
This is a cute one. At the end of the credits, as we pull back from the building to show the silhouettes of Charles, Oliver and Mabel, a sandbag falls to the ground. This, of course, is a reference to the multiple sandbags that fall in the episode (with one pair of sandbags almost killing Charles).
It’s hard to see in a screenshot (it’s easier when you see it fall), so here, I circled it in red…
COBRO
This is a simple one. Charles has been temporarily replaced in the Death Rattle musical, but he gets his job back by the end of the episode, and his apartment has Death Rattle wallpaper in it.
SITZPROBE
This is a simple one. The title of the episode, “Sitzprobe,” refers to the practice of when a musical has its first practice with a full orchestra, as that typically is when you can tell if the songs truly work for a stage musical or not. So therefore, the Easter egg is that on the top of the building, we see an orchestra conductor…
THIRTY
This is a simple one. The three heroes of the show, Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) have reunited as a murder-solving, podcast-having team, and their reunion is celebrated in the Easter Egg at the top of the episode…
There’s even a BONUS Easter Egg of the three working together later on in the credits…
OPENING NIGHT
This is a simple, but really cute one. It’s opening night for Death Rattle Dazzle: The Musical, and so when we go to each of the three stars’ windows in the building, they are curtained off and then the curtains open, and the actors’ names appear (the bit is slower for Martin, but pretty quick for Short and Gomez, to the point where I couldn’t even really get a good screen capture of Short’s curtains closed.
Very clever stuff.
If you have suggestions for a future Pop Culture Easter Eggs, feel free to drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
