Black Mirror’s “Black Museum” is packed with Easter eggs and references to past episodes, and here are all the objects both old and new. Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror premiered on British TV in 2011 and was acquired by Netflix in 2014, making the streaming service its current home. The series is notorious for its dark tone and examination of modern society and the role new technologies play in it.
Although every episode is a standalone story, most of them have references to past episodes, whether visual Easter eggs or direct mentions to other characters, technologies, or events. This has sparked the theory of a Black Mirror connected universe, which became clearer with season 4’s final episode “Black Museum”. The episode contains three stories told by Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge), owner of “Black Museum”, which houses “authentic criminological artifacts”, to visitor Nish (Letitia Wright). The museum had a lot of objects from other episodes, emphasizing their dangers and in some cases their technological failures.
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As Nish enters the museum there’s a picture of Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow), the protagonist of season 2’s episode “White Bear”, and a dummy with the mask from that same episode is seen later on. One of the robotic bees from “Hated in the Nation” is also on display, along with the shattered tablet that Sara used to beat her mother in “Arkangel”, and a device very similar to the headset used in “Playtest”. The bloodied bathtub comes from the episode “Crocodile”, and a dummy recreation of Carlton Bloom, the man that kidnapped the princess in “The National Anthem” and later hanged himself, can be seen nearby. The lollipop used by Robert Daly in “USS Callister” is also in Hayne’s possession, as well as the “cookies” from “White Christmas”. The objects not connected to past stories are the headset and implant to feel the sensations of others, the plush toy monkey, and the hologram projection of murderer Clayton Leigh.
There are other references to other episodes, though not as objects at the museum. The service station Nish stops at is called “BRB Connect”, a reference to season 2’s “Be Right Back”; Rolo Haynes used to work at St. Juniper’s Hospital, and Nish mentions uploading “old people to the cloud”, just like in “San Junipero”; the rats Haynes uses for his demonstration at the hospital are called Kenny and Hector, like the protagonists of “Shut Up and Dance”; and “Fifteen Million Merits” makes an appearance as a graphic novel.
If there were any doubts about the Black Mirror universe being a connected one, “Black Museum” came to clear them all. While some hate it for adding too many Easter eggs and others love it for it, “Black Museum” is a reminder of society’s bad decisions, technological failures, and the extent of evil and revenge, as well as the morbid fascination with tragic events and crimes.
