Why Jurassic World Couldn’t Use Dennis Nedry’s Stolen Embryos

There are a few reasons why Jurassic Worlddidn’t use one of Jurassic Park’s lingering plot points: the Barbasol shaving cream can containing dinosaur embryos that Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) lost when he died. Colin Trevorrow’s 2015 sequel soft reboots Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster; 22 years after the disaster on Isla Nublar, InGen has been purchased by Masrani Global Corporation and successfully operated the dinosaur theme park for a decade – until a similar disaster struck Jurassic World. Trevorrow’s trilogy continued in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and will conclude in 2021’s Jurassic World: Dominion.

Fans have wondered about the missing Barbasol can ever since Jurassic Park. In the original film, Nedry, one of the Park’s programmers, accepted a bribe from the rival BioSyn corporation. Dennis was provided with a gimmicked shaving cream can that could store 15 dinosaur embryos for 36 hours. As Nedry tried to escape the park during the stormy night that led to the dinosaur breakout, he crashed his jeep and was subsequently attacked and killed by a Dilophosaurus. The Barbasol can containing the embryos was lost in the mud, but this plot point was abandoned by Spielberg’s 1997 sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park III. The Barbasol can was also not mentioned at all in Jurassic World, but that makes sense considering how much time has passed in between Spielberg’s original film and Trevorrow’s soft reboot.

The likeliest explanation as to why Jurassic World moved past the Barbasol can plot point is that 22 years had passed since Jurassic Park. After all, the embryos in the can were only meant to last for 36 hours. Even if the can had been recovered, the embryos inside were useless. Further, Masrani wouldn’t need those stolen embryos anyway; they purchased InGen so they owned all of Dr. Henry Wu’s (B.D. Wong) research and they kept Wu on the payroll t0 make more dinosaurs as well as create new hybrids like the Indominus Rex and the Indoraptor. The embryos in the shaving cream can would only have been valuable to competing biotech companies trying to breed their own dinosaurs. Further, Isla Nublar was largely terraformed by Masrani to build Jurassic World, so though the Barbasol can may have been recovered at some point, the embryos within would have been useless. Barbasol’s real-world product tie-in to Jurassic World is its closest acknowledgment of Nedry’s lost embryos.

What ultimately did happen to the missing Barbasol can was the subject of 2011’s Jurassic Park: The Game, created by Telltale Games (The Walking Dead). Jurassic Park: The Game was set during the events of the original film, involving a pair of BioSyn mercenaries entering Isla Nublar to find Nedry and the embryos. They locate Nedry’s body and retrieve the Barbasol can, but they are attacked by the rampaging dinosaurs. The game offers two different endings for the Barbasol can: in the first, a mercenary named Nima is eaten by the T-rex and the can is left behind on the island. In the second ending, the T-rex steps on the can. Jurassic Park: The Game was intended to be canonical, but whether or not its story does occur in Jurassic World‘s pre-history, Nedry’s stolen Barbasol can never made it off Isla Nublar.

In 2002, Spielberg was excited about the script for the never-made Jurassic Park IV written by John Sayles (The Alienist), which made Nedry’s Barbasol can a focal point of its story. In Jurassic Park IV, a rival company bought InGen, the embryos somehow didn’t expire after 36 hours, and after they were retrieved, the film’s villain, Baron Werner V0n Drax, used them to make weaponized, hybrid, cybernetic dinosaurs. Colin Trevorrow later told Screen Crush that he did read Sayles’ Jurassic ParkIV script before he made Jurassic World and some elements influenced Trevorrow’s characters and story.

However, Trevorrow’s Jurassic World screenplay reworked a different Jurassic sequel script written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, and Trevorrow had to follow three directives from Spielberg: “The park is open, there is a raptor trainer (who became Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady), and the dinosaur that breaks free threatens the park.” Dennis Nedry’s stolen embryos simply didn’t factor into Jurassic World‘s equation, and since Isla Nublar was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the Barbasol can is now permanently lost to history.

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