The Stephen King Easter Egg You Missed In Children Of The Corn
Stephen King's "Children of the Corn" has always been one of the more obscure stories in his extensive and impressive fictional canon, even though it's spawned an equally impressive number of direct-to-home-video sequels — seven in total, followed by two reboot editions. That's a lot of creepy cornfield shenanigans for one short story to produce.
The 1984 film of his short story significantly changes the ending of the original story — in the movie, the good guys win handily against the underage demon worshippers. The same does not happen in the short story, which also includes further ritualistic sacrifice and the suggestion of even more calamities yet to come.
It's a little ironic, then, that there's a clever Easter egg that references the origin of the "Children of the Corn" universe hiding right in plain sight during the full running time of the movie. Want to know what it is? Keep reading to find out.
In this universe, Stephen is still King...of the dashboard
Pay close attention to the driving scenes during "Children of the Corn" and you'll spy a paperback book lying on the dashboard of the car whenever Burt Stanton (Peter Horton) and Vicky Baxter (Linda Hamilton) are inside. That book is an edition of Stephen King's "Night Shift," a collection of his short stories. "Children of the Corn" is one of the tales included within the volume, making quite the neat callback to the story's origins.
"Night Shift" also includes other King stories which were eventually made into films, including "The Lawnmower Man," "The Mangler," "Sometimes They Come Back," and "Trucks," which King himself directed as "Maximum Overdrive."
Fun fact: before "Children of the Corn" was included as part of the "Night Shift" collection, it was originally published in the March 1977 edition of Penthouse magazine, according to the book's copyright page. Quite a place for a spine-chiller about demon-worshipping children to originally be published.