I'm Thinking of Ending Things: Every Easter Egg Explained
Throughout the entirety of I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, director Charlie Kaufman leaves easter eggs for viewers to decipher. They range from names, musicals, and even complex philosophical novels. It is surely a culmination of everything Kaufman has worked so diligently towards in his career as a writer and director. In I’m Thinking Of Ending Things even the easter eggs serve a purpose to further the complex plot.
Jake (Jesse Plemons) knows an array of book and movie references that are spread throughout the entirety of the film. One scene in the film finds the young woman—or Lucy/Louisa/Lucia (Jessie Buckley)—in Jake's childhood bedroom. As she looks around the room, a book by Pauline Kael sits alongside a David Foster Wallace novel, a DVD copy of A Beautiful Mind, and what appears to be miscellaneous home videos. This scene in particular is full of easter eggs that serves to later explain both previous and upcoming events in the movie, which takes the audience through numerous twists before the final reveal.
In Iain Reid’s novel, Jake is a connoisseur of literature and holds a wealth of knowledge that the girlfriend admires. Kaufman takes his interests and applies them to the young woman as well as the plot in order to provide some semblance of an explanation for the events in the film. Here is every easter egg in I’m Thinking Of Ending Things explained.
During one of the janitor’s early scenes, he is watching a romantic comedy about a young waitress who is fired when a man brazenly announces that he loves her. When the film ends, the credits roll and reveal that Robert Zemeckis was the director. The director is known for the Back To The Future trilogy as well as Forrest Gump.
Kaufman commented on the inclusion of the credit; it was completely up to the assistant editors. He initially didn't have a name selected, but when he saw that they had put Zemeckis in as the director, he found it so funny that he decided to keep it and asked the director for permission to use his name. There's no connection between Zemeckis and any of the characters, but the inclusion of his name adds a comedic effect when it's juxtaposed with I’m Thinking Of Ending Things.
When the janitor witnesses a group of students rehearsing the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical Oklahoma!, it invades Jake’s thinking during his fantasy. Songs such as “Many A New Day” and “Lonely Room” are used in order to capture a greater sense of who he is and how he feels. Each song represents a feeling Jake experiences in I’m Thinking Of Ending Things. For instance, “Many A New Day” is about the romance between Curly and Laurey of Oklahoma! When the song plays, it indicates that there is a false romantic connection between Jake and Lucy/Louisa/Lucia.
The bizarre ending of the film unveils a dream sequence where Jake stands among props that share a striking resemblance to those in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Reality’s Jake (the janitor) breaks through the fantasy and triggers the song “Lonely Room,” which he sings to the crowd. This song tells the story of Oklahoma’s! Jud and Curly, who are both unable to achieve their goal of winning over Laurey. Similarly, Jake was not able to confront his own insecurities and win over the girl at trivia night; she now manifests in his fantasies as the young woman. Kaufman included Oklahoma! in order to mirror his characters and their relationships with themselves and each other.
The first instance where the audience sees the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind is when the young woman enters Jake’s childhood bedroom and sees a DVD copy laying on top of a stack of books. A Beautiful Mind follows the story of real-life mathematician John Nash. The film notably details his descent into developing paranoid schizophrenia. It's possible that Jake relates to John Nash due to the delusions he is experiencing and his deteriorating mental state. He recites the entirety of the film’s ending speech, which brings closure to Nash's character in Ron Howard’s film and Jake in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things.
In the same scene that the young woman is in Jake’s room, she also sees a book titled For Keeps: 30 Years At The Movies, which includes Pauline Kael’s film reviews. Kael was a notable film critic for the New Yorker who the young woman goes on to impersonate in the car. She repeats the critic’s entire review on the John Cassavetes film, Woman Under The Influence, from beginning to end. It is included in order to reflect the fact that Jake admires the film critic and her opinions, but also the idea that he cannot achieve the same greatness as the notable Pauline Kael who, to him, epitomizes intellect beyond his own.
Nearly every major easter egg occurs in Jake’s bedroom. This is due to the fact that it represents his formative years in which everything he encountered impacted his adult way of thinking. On the same shelf as Pauline Kael’s book sits David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, a large book of poetry by William Wordsworth, a VHS copy of The Thing, and various books on the study of diseases as well as meditation. After leaving his parents’ farm, the couple discuss most of the books included on the shelf.
When referencing William Wordsworth, Jake discusses “Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood.” It is one of the poet's most well-known works that features the complex conversations that are also in I’m Thinking Of Ending Things: youth, old age, and death. The poem establishes that Jake has a fear of these three things. The books on disease and meditation can be attributed to his mother’s ailments. One text in particular is on the use of humming in meditative practices and their healing properties. In the beginning of the film, his mother complains of hearing a constant whisper in her ear. They work in conjunction to posit that Jake tried his best to help her by researching possible remedies before she died.
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is an existential movie with subtle clues to match its themes. The easter egg of The Thing VHS represents the existential horror sub-genre because the 1982 John Carpenter film is also considered a part of it. It may also be a subtle nod to the blizzard at the end of the movie that assists in Jake's decision to end his life.