How IT Chapter 2’s Shining Reference Creates a Plot Hole

IT Chapter 2 contains lots of Stephen King Easter eggs, but its reference to the movie version of The Shining creates a paradox of a plot hole. With more and more Stephen King-based movies being made every year, it’s become increasingly common for them to throw in references to King’s other work, or other adaptations of it. This usually isn’t much of a problem, as King himself opts to connect many of his books in small ways, and a subtle nod to a prior King movie is usually just a moment for fans to chuckle at.

IT Chapter 2 actually contains a few smaller references to The Shining that don’t lead to any logic gaps, such as the nameplate on a librarian’s desk in Derry reading Wendy Torrance – there could certainly be more than one Wendy Torrance in the world – and the pattern from the Overlook Hotel’s carpets being seen on the bottom of a skateboard. These are perfectly harmless little in-jokes, and don’t at all strain the consistency of the film’s universe.

Unfortunately, IT Chapter 2‘s final Shining nod presents a problem, one that threatens to collapse the movie’s world in on itself. That comes near the end of the film, when IT is menacing Beverly inside a bathroom stall quickly filling with blood.

How IT Chapter 2’s Shining Reference Creates a Plot Hole

While Beverly is inside the bathroom stall filling with blood, IT takes various forms and uses them to scare her further. One of these is kid Henry Bowers, who proceeds to burst through the broken stall door and do the “Here’s Johnny!” bit made iconic by Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance in The Shining. itself a reference to Ed McMahon’s classic introduction of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. The thing is, that only happened in Stanley Kubrick’s movie, not Stephen King’s book, and Nicholson said it much differently than McMahon ever did. Since Bowers does the line exactly the same way Nicholson did, the only logical explanation is that he’s seen the film.

But if The Shining movie exists in IT Chapter 2‘s universe, the book would have to as well, and if the book exists, so does an author named Stephen King, who in reality went on to write the book IT, which the sequel is an adaptation of. It’s a logic loop that folds in on itself, especially since King cameos in the film, albeit clearly not as himself. IT, the book definitely doesn’t exist in its own universe, as that would make zero sense. So it doesn’t make sense that any of King’s other books would exist either, except as events that actually happened to real people in other locations. But the movie existing necessitates that the book does too. While King did make himself a character in the last Dark Tower book, that’s only because he specifically involved a version of his own actual reality in the story, a thing the IT movies never hint at. It’s an extremely odd choice, and one that causes lots of headscratching the moment one stops to consider its implications.

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