A fan uncovers a subtle audio Easter egg in Top Gun: Maverick and impresses Tom Cruise. A sequel to Tony Scott’s 1986 classic Top Gun, this summer’s biggest blockbuster sees Cruise reprise his iconic role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell to train a new generation of Navy pilots for a dangerous mission, including the young hotshot Hangman, played by Glen Powell. The sequel, directed by Oblivion’s Joseph Kosinski with a script co-written by Mission: Impossible’s Christopher McQuarrie, features a ton of callbacks and Easter eggs to the original, most notably a beach football game played by the recruits meant to replicate Top Gun’s famous volleyball scene.
In the past several months since Top Gun: Maverick’s release, fans have noticed just about every callback or reference to the original, though there is one subtle Easter egg that went entirely unnoticed, until now. On Twitter, user @msmegalodon shared two clips side-by-side pointing at how the sequel sampled audio of Slider’s excited howl from the volleyball scene for Hangman during the recreated beach football scene. Top Gun: Maverick’s editor, Eddie Hamilton, replied to the post and confirmed it was a “very deliberate little nod to the original iconic beach volleyball scene.” Christopher McQuarrie chimed in too, saying he and Cruise were impressed by the fan’s discovery. Check out the series of tweets below:
my favorite party trick is showing people that they sampled the volleyball scene audio in top gun 1986 for the beach football scene in top gun maverick pic.twitter.com/S6jPYDQKPH
— emma (@msmegalodon) November 12, 2022
How Top Gun: Maverick Honors The Original
While sampling audio from Top Gun’s beach volleyball scene might be the subtlest way the sequel honors the original, it is far from the only way. From the opening scene, Top Gun: Maverick evokes memories of its predecessor with the use of a title card, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, and similar footage of ground crews preparing jets for takeoff. The sequel also goes on to visit the same bar from the original, “The Hard Deck,” where the Navy pilots frequently go to blow off some steam.
Top Gun: Maverick’s beach football scene is an overt nod to the original and an important bonding exercise for the Top Gun recruits. While these are some of the more obvious ways the sequel honors the original Top Gun, there are some references that haven’t been noticed as much, similar to the sampled audio. In the sequel, Maverick still rides his Kawasaki motorcycle without a helmet, doesn’t respect hard decks, and buzzes the tower at high speeds.
These Top Gun: Maverick callbacks are meant to signify that, even after thirty years, Maverick is still the same daring pilot from the original. While there haven’t been any decisions made about Maverick returning in a potential Top Gun 3, Cruise, McQuarrie, and Hamilton will reunite on the upcoming Mission Impossible movies, which they are currently working on right now. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is due out next summer, followed by Dead Reckoning Part Two in 2024.