Blade Runner Has An Unofficial 'Sequel' With Kurt Russell - But Most Fans Never Heard Of It

Before comic book adaptations made extended universes a thing, movies occasionally gave discreet winks and nods to other big-screen entries without making any official connections between them. In "Predator 2," for example, Danny Glover stumbles across a trophy room that happens to have a xenomorph skull on full display, cementing the Alien as part of the "Predator" story forever.

Interestingly, that isn't the only Ridley Scott movie tied to another film by a small background detail. In director Paul W.S. Anderson's late-90s sci-fi actioner "Soldier," bonds can be found that link the movie all the way back to Scott's masterpiece (and one of the best sci-fi movies of all time), "Blade Runner." The creative connection came from writer David Peoples, who penned both screenplays. While promoting "Soldier" in 1998, Peoples told Cinescape Magazine, "These two movies really do exist in the same universe to me. In our minds, this is kind of an extension of 'Blade Runner,' or a brother or sister to that film."

Anderson's film supports this by making it clear that Sgt. Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell) fought in the Battle of Orion, a place Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) refers to in "Blade Runner." "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," Hauer's character says in Scott's film. "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orin." It's not the only hard-to-spot snippet in "Soldier" that links back to Deckard's (Harrison Ford) tech noir detective story, either. Even the hero's legendary ride gets some attention in Anderson's now-cult classic movie — but does that really make it a sequel?

When Kurt Russell's Todd 3465 holes up in a camp on the waste planet he eventually calls home, a Spinner hovercraft from "Blade Runner" can be seen poking its nose out at the bottom of the screen. There's also a piece of the Lewis & Clark, the spaceship from Paul W.S. Anderson's cult classic, "Event Horizon." The characters don't really take much notice of either piece of abandoned tech, but anyone who's a fan of both movies will spot them easily.

According to People's, though, these nods to sci-fi films gone by weren't his doing. In fact, he's changed his story to state that "Soldier" never had any intentional ties to "Blade Runner." Instead, the writer says that it was inspired by an entirely different science fiction movie.

In the book "Soldier: From Script to Screen" (via JoBlo), Peoples separates himself from his previous statements about the film's connections to "Blade Runner." "No, I never had any thoughts about that. I wrote 'Soldier' in 1984. Very quickly on my own. I wrote it because I saw the first 'Terminator' in the theater, stunned. And it was such a wonderful movie," he said. "I'd always wanted to write a movie in which there was a tough guy who would be seemingly unsympathetic in the lead, and I felt that The Terminator was almost there." Peoples acknowledged that eventually changed with "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." "But the fact is, he [Arnold Schwarzenegger] was so great. I went off, and I decided to write about this soldier." Consider the theory terminated, then.

Want more fascinating sci-fi trivia? Check out this story on the improvised Rutger Hauer line that changed "Blade Runner" forever.