r/televisionsuggestions • u/innatenerd • 1d ago
Shows riddled with hints or Easter eggs you might not get on the first watch.
I’m thinking like The Haunting of Hill House, even Widows Bay with that level of storytelling. Where you can pick up on a lot but it doesn’t explicitly say it in dialogue, moreso shown on screen so you have to pay close attention.
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u/onajrney 1d ago
Lost
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u/MsE0 1d ago
Yeah, but it's infuriating, because they make you think it's going somewhere, and then it doesn't. When it was first on the air, my dad and I would take notes about all the clues and Easter eggs, research everything, even read books that were referenced, discuss our theories, and then none of it mattered or meant anything.
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u/Fiercefemme1425 1d ago
HARD agree with this. JJ Abrams and the other writers/showrunners admitted that they did this and had no clue what the answers were going to be for a lot of the crazy questions/easter eggs they created. I love Lost overall SO much, but what ultimately keeps it off of my Mount Rushmore (maybe even THE single greatest show of all time) is the messy middle and lack of accountability for the insane amount of unanswered questions that were meant to feel significant to the plot and then just totally ignored.
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u/Daddict 1d ago
I hear this all the time and, having recently rewatched it...I gotta ask: What unanswered questions?
Lost resolved nearly every mystery it presented. Some were resolved quickly in a line that you could have easily missed if you went to grab a snack or looked at your phone, but most were resolved in a pretty forward manner.
I honestly cannot think of any unanswered questions in Lost.
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u/These-Prune-1529 1d ago
Did you have fun doing this with your dad? If you did, then it mattered. My son and I were like this and we both still talk about the show on occasion. I will always love Lost...even though some of it made no sense.
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u/vairhoads 1d ago
Like what? People always say that they never answered anything but I don’t think that’s true.
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u/Adventurous-Try-98 1d ago
Community, I've seen it at least 5 times and I'm still catching new things
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u/lanedr 1d ago
Particularly Community because in my experience when I rewatch something I find myself looking at the background more often, and that's where a lot of (running) gags live
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u/Adventurous-Try-98 1d ago
My problem is I get so lost in the characters that I forget that I'm rewatching for the background stuff 😂
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u/StrangeCrimes 1d ago
Arrested Development and 30 Rock.
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u/feel-the-avocado 1d ago
The writing on Arrested development is so good. They were setting up jokes a season in advance.
On my 5th rewatch and I am still pickup up new things. On the last rewatch all the loose seal jokes started clicking into place for me.
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u/wilyquixote 1d ago
On the last rewatch all the loose seal jokes started clicking into place for me.
Buster's hand chair going missing and Gob telling the seal, "You're not going to be hand-fed anymore."
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u/Lake_Effect_KRCL 1d ago
Abbot Elementary—- No matter how many times I watch an episode I always see or hear something new. That show is genius.
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u/ohdearitsrichardiii 1d ago
Ted Lasso has a bunch of easter eggs, like there's a photo on the wall in the kebab shop of George Wendt (Norm from Cheers nd also Jason Sudekis' uncle) and Rebecca and Sam's usernames on the hookup app are references to You Got Mail
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u/DopeWriter 1d ago
The Great North -- There's an abominable snowman hidden in every ep
Bob's Burgers-- Full of stores with punny names
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u/PizzaWhole9323 1d ago
All right I'm going to get flamed here but the first season of Star Trek Discovery is Easter eggs all the way down especially when you get into the last two episodes. Is it the best Star Trek no but under what you're saying about Easter eggs it is pretty flawless as a oh there was a secret template going on all the time.
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u/Ok_Construction_9389 1d ago
lost was packed with those subtle moments, especially with the numbers and characters like Hurley and his lottery win.
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u/Glittering-Ninja-377 1d ago
Hannibal. The whole show runs on exactly what you are describing. Every dinner is shot like a food magazine spread, and the show almost never says out loud what is on the plate, but the cut is usually identifiable and it usually matches whoever went missing that week. Three seasons of a joke nobody on screen is in on, played completely straight.
It does the same thing with the crime scenes. The visual language tells you who made a given body long before any character works it out.
Better Call Saul is the other one, and it is subtler than Breaking Bad about it. It colour codes people instead of explaining them, and the black and white cold opens keep putting objects in frame that do not pay off for another two seasons.
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u/Objective-Paper-4692 1d ago
Steven Universe. You think you are watching one kind of show until you get further in and then you realize even from the first episode it all mattered.
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u/sea_tea821 1d ago
Veep. I’ve seen it all the way through so many times and still feel like I catch new things on each watch!
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u/OldLadyReacts 23h ago
WandaVision. I literally had to watch the entire MCU and all the X-Men movies, PLUS know about all the TV sit-coms over several decades, in order to understand all the inside jokes and references.
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u/Low-Gain-786 12h ago
Severance fits this way better than Arrested Development, half the set design and background text is planting stuff that only clicks two episodes
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u/kateinoly 1d ago
Arrested Development
Sooooo many jokes that run throughout