10 Easter Eggs You Missed In Star Wars Episode 1

The first episode in the Star Wars franchise was about as divisive as a film could get. At the time of its release, it was hyped beyond belief, so standards were just about impossible to meet. Fans were split between loving and hating the film, but in recent years the hate-o-meter has been filled to the brim.

No matter how you feel about George Lucas’ CGI-leaning, pod-race-centered prequel, you can’t say he didn’t try to drop tiny details in for committed fans to uncover.  Here are ten of the best Easter eggs you missed in the first entry to the Skywalker Saga.

10 ET’s Family

We’re kicking off with what is certainly the most well-known of these early Easter eggs. There a surprising number of scenes set in the Senate for a kid’s film. Discussion of the taxation of trade routes and political turmoil becomes the focus of the film, with debates taking place amongst various representatives from across the galaxy.

If you look closely, you can see one floating pod filled with little ET’s from the well-known Spielberg classic. The two directors are known to be friends, so this is a nice little nod to Steven’s work that also allows Star Wars fans to debate whether ET exists in a galaxy far, far away.

9 Anakin’s Vader Shadow

The first Star Wars film isn’t exactly known for visuals spectacles. Filling every frame with CGI took away from the realistic (yet also pretty puppet-heavy) look of the original films, leaving Lucas with a lot of controversy for interfering with a series that should be visually gripping.

However, one of his more impressive visual moments comes when a young Anakin is standing in front of a sand hut while Obi-Wan and Qui Gon are walking back to their ship, and Anakin’s shadow projects a silhouette of Darth Vader onto the wall. Very clever.

8 A Repurposed Razor

The props department in films is often a criminally underrated crew. Talented artists are able to take everyday objects and turn them into incredible, futuristic props. If you have a very keen eye and an encyclopedic knowledge of women’s shaving products, then you might be able to notice that Qui Gon’s Communicator is simply a Sensor Excel Razor For Women that has been sprayed and edited.

It isn’t exactly an Easter egg, but it is certainly a cool way of getting a look behind the scenes at what goes into creating a Star Wars film.

7 Future C-3PO Parts?

This is a very cool one, partially built on fan theory. It is a fairly solid, reputable fan theory, though. In the background of Watto’s shop, there are various pieces of unrelated junk, including what looks like C-3PO propped up in the background.

This is actually a ‘skin’ for a droid, and it might well be the skin we eventually see C-3PO wearing. The one we see in Watto’s shop has half a leg missing, and if you remember from A New Hope, one of 3PO’s leg is half silver, suggesting Anakin used this exact skin to finish his droid.

6 An Appearance From Quinlan Vos

When ThePhantom Menace first hit cinema screens way back in 1999, there had barely been anything added to the Star Wars expanded universe. A few books and a couple of dodgy spin-offs featuring Ewoks/Christmas was about all we had.

Now we can barely move for content, with a character called Quinlan Vos existing in these expanded universe stories. The character is part of an Easter egg that sort of exists retroactively, because the character is present for a few seconds during a scene on Mos Espa way before being fleshed out in The Clone Wars.

5 And George Lucas’ Daughter

George Lucas’ daughter also makes an appearance in the film as an extra named Amee. With your dad being the creator of the series, it must be pretty easy to get your foot into a role in the biggest franchise in history.

Amee plays one of Anakin’s friends as he builds his pod racer. It must be pretty weird for the character to look back and think she was once standing around laughing at the future Darth Vader.

4 THX-1138

Before Star Wars, George Lucas made a fairly unsuccessful and unmemorable sci-fi film called THX-1138. The incredibly uncatchy title doesn’t help its cause, but Lucas obviously never forgot about it and slipped a subtle reference to his past work into The Phantom Menace.

When Jar Jar makes one of his only meaningful impacts on the battle by killing a droid during the concluding fight of the film, it has a logo embossed onto its back that seems to read 1138.

3 The Pod From 2001

This is a much stranger one which doesn’t seem to have such an obvious connection like the ET Easter egg. Watto was known for collecting and selling all sorts of junk, some worth nothing (but he’d still try to scam people into paying through the nose, of course), and some worth a whole lot more.

When Qui Gon and R2D2 are walking through his junkyard, you can actually see a pod from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. How he came to possess that is anyone’s guess, and if there is any reason for Lucas to have included it other than to reference great cinema of the past is unknown as well.

2 The Enterprise

Star Trek and Star Wars fans don’t typically see eye to eye, normally agreeing to disagree in regard to which series is truly the greatest beacon of nerd culture and space exploration.

Despite that, there seems to be a very clear CGI rendering of a ship that just looks like The Enterprise from Star Trek. Was this intentional, or was Lucas just running low on designs for ships?

1 Creative Team Cameos

It is always nice to see the creative forces behind a film getting the recognition they deserve. Towards the end of The Phantom Menace, no one has clocked onto Palpatine’s hidden evil, so it falls to him to give a medal to Padme.

Behind him, Ben Burt and Rick McCallum are dressed in black acting as extras, respectively,  they were the sound effects director and producer of the film.