Easter Eggs You Missed In Kingsman: Golden Circle

Kingsman: The Golden Circle didn't run, burst, or explode into theaters. It strode in, gentleman-like, to grace our eyeballs with posh car chases and positively debonair people-getting-cut-in-half-everywhere fight scenes. Director Matthew Vaughn once again went to outrageous extremes with the action and violence, continuing his credo of what he called "my Spinal Tap of trying to find 11 with every scene."

Polish your Oxfords and drain that martini, because here are all the Easter eggs you missed in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. And yeah, we're talking about a lot of Elton John here. Spoilers ahead!

Neither Kingsman movie has been shy about referencing James Bond, the granddaddy of all spy franchises, but the Golden Circle went a step further and appropriated one of 007's own weapons for young Eggsy (Taron Egerton). With upgrades, of course. The machine gun briefcase he uses during the film's climactic raid on Poppy Land was a callback to Sean Connery's Bond, who used a similar weaponized business accessory in From Russia with Love. Of course, that one didn't fold out into a bulletproof shield, but hey, it had a knife. And speaking of Bond...

Midway through the film, The Golden Circle delivers an action-packed sequence in which Eggsy, Harry (Colin Firth), and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) infiltrate a mountaintop lab to steal the antidote for Poppy's drug virus. Things go haywire, and Eggsy and Whiskey find themselves skidding down a mountain slope in a ski-lift car, barreling toward a bunch of tourists in the lodge at the bottom of the mountain. In a flash of gentlemanly genius, Eggsy pops Whiskey's parachute to slow them down. Whiskey being a Statesman, the parachute is the brightest American flag Betsy Ross ever dreamed of.

Bond aficionados probably caught the reference. In Roger Moore's 1977 The Spy Who Loved Me, the opening scene has Bond ski off a cliff to certain death...only to open his parachute at the last moment, blazing the colors of the British flag. Snowy mountains, a plunge to the death, and a last-minute parachute emblazoned with stately pride? Definitely a nod with a twist. 

Keeping Elton John as her piano slave is just one of Poppy's (Julianne Moore) messed-up moves, but it gave us one quick Easter egg. On the marquee outside the theater where she makes Elton play is a sign advertising Captain Fantastic, which, of course, happens to be a reference to his album Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy. And if you caught the other side of the marquee, you probably saw the lettering saying "The B**** Is Back," which is an Elton John song. It didn't appear on the Captain Fantastic album, but you know which song did? "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," which he tweaked a little in the film to celebrate Wednesday, since that happened to be the day he was getting rescued.

Poppy's got a real thing going for Elton John in The Golden Circle. She kidnapped him, obviously. But that adoration goes even deeper than keeping him locked up in her jungle lair—she also named her dogs for him. We're talking, of course, about the robo-pooches with the meat-mincer mouths who ravage anyone Poppy commands them to. (Except Elton John. Elton John is a friend.) If you watch closely, you can see their names pop up on screen several times, first over their doghouses and second when you're seeing through robo-dog vision: Bennie and Jet. And you might know where this is going—"Bennie and the Jets" is a song John released in 1973 on his album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

The opening chase sequence is a death-defying spectacle, employing Matthew Vaughn's signature frenetic camerawork and some seriously awesome long shots. Amid all the screeching cars and flying bullets, though, came a weapon straight out of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons' original Kingsman comics. When Eggsy busts through the gate and starts driving through the secluded park, he's finally given the go-ahead from Merlin to return fire on Poppy's goons—which he does in the most badass way possible, pushing a button and sending three rockets arching into the air to come back down on the three vehicles pursuing him.

In the comics, Eggsy uses the same weapon to shake murderous pursuers, again in the opening scene of the story. Granted, he's on a snowmobile at the time, and the people chasing him are on skis, but the result is still exactly the same: much exploded bad guys.

In January 2017, Taron Egerton revealed that the Kingsman sequel was going to feature a deleted scene from the first movie, telling Den of Geek, "I personally thought shouldn't have been cut, and that's now in the second film. But what it is...I don't think I can say."

Good for you for staying away from spoilers, Mr. Egerton. But now that the movie's out, and there's a spoiler alert at the top of this article, we can say what scene he was talking about. Nope, it's not the one with young Michael Caine. It's the one when Harry teaches Eggsy how to eat like a gentleman at breakfast, as discussed by Matthew Vaughn and Taron Egerton. In The Golden Circle, the scene shows up when Eggsy's girlfriend is trying to prepare him for dinner with her parents, the king and queen of Sweden. Why was it cut? Hilariously, Vaughn left it out because he thought the scene made it look like Eggsy and Harry had slept together the night before.

One of the funniest—and most controversial—scenes in Kingsman: The Secret Service came at the end, when the Swedish princess offered Eggsy a certain sexual favor in return for saving the world. Of course, Princess Tilde is back in The Golden Circle, this time in a much larger role as Eggsy's girlfriend. Their relationship has evolved since the 30 seconds of screentime they had together in the first film, but Tilde still knows how to motivate her boyfriend. Just before he jets off to save the world, she reminds him what he'll get if he does a good job. Considering the backlash against the joke in the first movie, it took a certain amount of moxie for Vaughn to stick another reference to it in the sequel. Who says chivalry is dead?