Small Details You Missed In The Free Guy Trailer
The world needed a hero, but they got a Guy.
On Saturday, December 7, 20th Century Fox unleashed the first trailer for Free Guy — the upcoming adventure-comedy movie starring Ryan Reynolds as the titular character, a straight-laced, do-what-he's-told bank teller who endures countless horrors every waking moment of his life. He gets struck by cars, shot at, and punched in the face — and that's all before he even gets to work, where he frequently becomes the hostage in bank robberies. Initially, Guy doesn't seem to mind all the physical pain, but he soon tells his co-worker Buddy (Lil Rel Howery) that there's "gotta be more" to life than the things they endure each day. And there is: Guy's just a mere background character, a non-player nobody, in a massive open-world video game. Gathering up all his gumption just before learning the truth of his reality, Guy fights back against the baddies, venturing to become the hero for once in his life.
The trailer, which is hilariously set to Mariah Carey's 1995 single "Fantasy," is filled to the brim with quintessential Ryan Reynolds humor (the same kind that made us all love his antihero character Deadpool), visual gags, plenty of action, and a butt-kicking heroine in the form of Jodie Comer's Milly, otherwise known as Molotov Girl. But what it also has is a handful of references that likely slipped right under your radar. Here are the small details you may have missed in the Free Guy trailer.
There's a Fortnite reference in the Free Guy trailer
What would a movie about a character inside a video game be without a reference to one of the biggest video games in recent history?
Early on in the trailer for Free Guy, there's a quick shot of a character (seemingly Jodie Comer's Milly, donning a different outfit than what we see her in later) dressed in an army-green jacket, matching pants, a black hat, and oversized sunglasses. There's chaos unfolding around her — a man, presumably Reynolds' Guy, lays motionless on the ground in front of her, and a woman to her right is standing beside her car with a look of disbelief on her face — but the character is lost in her own little world. She's smirking and performing the unmistakable "Orange Justice" emote from Fortnite, the Epic Games title that has taken the world by storm since its release in July 2017.
Audiences can probably expect to see more Fortnite Easter eggs hidden within Free Guy – and something tells us that Ryan Reynolds' Guy just might have to learn a dance or two from the game to survive potential death later on.
Ryan Reynolds gets Meet Joe Black-ed in Free Guy
Speaking of Ryan Reynolds' Free Guy character experiencing a brush with death, during the film's first trailer, he nearly meets his maker after being hit by a car... and then getting struck again by a bright yellow taxi. In the context of the film's overall narrative, this is a humorous moment: Guy probably suffers this terrible fate multiple times a week, if not multiple times in a single day. Look a little closer and think a little harder, though, and you'll realize this unfortunate incident actually doubles as a reference to Meet Joe Black — the 1998 rom-com in which the personification of death enters the body of a man, Brad Pitt's Joe Black, after he's hit by two vehicles in an accident that should have been fatal. The dual collisions play out exactly the same way in the Free Guy trailer as they do in Meet Joe Black: it's an SUV/van that strikes first, then a taxi.
We don't anticipate Free Guy ending how Meet Joe Black did — with the end of one man's life and the start of a very interesting romance — but at least the films will be forever linked through this clever reference.
A familiar fatality in the first trailer for Free Guy
In the Free Guy trailer, Guy takes a shot at a new life by firing a literal shot at a robber carrying out a heist at his bank. The man, dressed in a cloud-patterned trench coat and wearing a skull face mask with the eyes cut out, falls to the ground in a heap. The camera then pans to show the damage that's been done: the criminal is dead, left with a giant hole torn through his stomach.
It's a gruesome wound, for sure, but it's also potentially a nod to some interesting fatalities seen in the ever-popular, ever-violent video game series Mortal Kombat. Throughout the game series, several characters have shot, burnt, or punched a circle through in their victims' torsos: Sub-Zero uses his fist to stamp a hole in his opponent's stomach, D'Vorah leaves a gaping hole in her rivals using her infamous "Bug Me" fatality, and even Erron Black takes a circular chunk out of his Kombatants via his "Death Trap" move. But the Mortal Kombat fatality that most closely resembles the wound the baddie in Free Guy is left with is Liu Kang's "Burn Out" move, during which the character makes his enemies' torsos look like Swiss cheese by burning several holes into them.
Whether this nod to Mortal Kombat in the Free Guy trailer was intentional or merely coincidental, there's no denying how cool it is.
A McCree lookalike pops up in the Free Guy trailer
Yet another video game reference occurs at the 2-minutes-and-21-seconds mark of the Free Guy trailer. At that moment, Guy, newly equipped with the dead man's glasses that allow him to see his world for what it truly is, faces off against an outlaw who swings a knife at him. Guy gains the upper hand by using a steering wheel — yes, a steering wheel — as a defensive weapon in which to catch the villain's hand and wrist. When Guy twists the wheel sharply, his opponent drops to his knees. It's there where we can see his face more clearly — and discern that he looks a whole lot like a character from a wildly popular video game: the ex-gang member and gunslinging outlaw McCree from Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch.
The mysterious Free Guy malefactor and McCree share a ton of similarities — from their brown hats and matching jackets to their thick side burns — but the jury's still out on whether the former will echo the latter's signature catchphrase "it's high noon!" during battle.
The cars in the Free Guy trailer give a wink to Grand Theft Auto
With the release of the first trailer for the film, it's evident that Free Guy exudes the same kind of full-throttle, often-chaotic energy that the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise does. Ryan Reynolds' Guy is essentially a non-player character from Grand Theft Auto, the film's composer Christophe Beck has said that the film as a whole is like a mash-up of Grand Theft Auto and The Truman Show, and not a single person on the streets of Free City is safe from an onslaught of vehicular violence — just like there's zero mercy for pedestrians in the world of GTA.
That vibe is present and potent from the get-go in the Free Guy trailer, but a subtler nod to the GTA franchise comes in the back half of the footage, when Guy and Milly step into the Free City Depot and take a gander at the many vehicles they can choose to operate. A number of cars shown in the trailer resemble ones from various Grand Theft Auto games — there's a yellow stunner that looks similar to the two-door Pegassi Tempesta from GTA Online, a pink Hummer-style car that resembles the one seen in artwork for the "Ill-Gotten Gains" DLC, and an orange Camaro that looks like the ones you can get in various GTA installments.
Guy and Milly will probably take a number of these vehicles out for a spin in the upcoming film, though we can't blame them if they decide that sticking with the sleek red motorcycle shown at the end of the Free Guy trailer is the best course of action to get their monumental job done. May luck be on their side — and speed limits non-existent — when Free Guy hits theaters on July 3, 2020.