It Takes Over Fans' Brains

Piggybacking off of the fact that James Gunn loves these movies more than you do, he consciously does something that most directors attempt but he excels at: he includes a billion and a half references in each film that fans spend an inordinate amount of time pouring over. Do a quick search on YouTube for Guardians of the Galaxy easter eggs and you will be greeted by almost a million videos of people trying to understand everything that he’s hidden.

There is currently a “Ready Player One” scale hunt for a final easter egg that James Gunn has sworn to take to his grave if no one figures it out. It’s become such a popular treasure hunt that regular journalism sites are weighing in as the nerdy faithful dive deep into the mystery. Some users have gone so far as to decipher the coordinates of some of the first movies establishing shots, perform a substitution cypher on those numbers to come up with a word that exposes extra information that might reveal extra easter eggs in Vol. 2. These movies have so much hidden content that some folks will be watching them for years just trying to figure everything out.