Ever since we discovered the horrors of the
Sunken Place in Get Out, we've been wondering
whether it would link to Jordan Peele's follow-up
movie Us about a family confronted by their
doppelgangers.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in
this video I'm revealing the hidden connections
between Us and Get Out and explaining why
the two movies likely exist in the same universe.
Spoilers ahead for both films, so take care
if you haven't seen them yet.
The conspiracy that Chris uncovers in Get
Out is that his girlfriend Rose and her family
are part of a secret society that have been
transplanting rich white people's brains and
consciousness into the bodies of younger black
men and women who they've abducted.
The experiments in Us have been carried out
on larger numbers of people, but there are
some major similarities and connections between
the two conspiracies.
In Peele's new movie, we discover the Tethered
are the product of an experiment that's taken
place underground.
The conspirators who set this up planned to
use the doppelgangers as a way to control
their look-a-likes above ground.
Adelaide's counterpart Red explains that although
the process created a copy of a person's body,
it failed to create a separate soul.
This meant that the doubles below the surface
became tethered to the bodies above and ended
up with little control over their lives.
Because of the scheme's apparent failure to
create an independent consciousness in their
subjects, the people in charge decided to
abandon the experiment and they left the Tethered
alone in the tunnels to fend for themselves.
Fast forward to 2017 and Get Out where Rose's
family have almost, but not quite, perfected
a medical procedure where they can transplant
a person's mind into the body of another human
being.
To see why the mad scientists responsible
for the Tethered in Us could be the same ones
who developed the brain surgery that we see
Dean performing in Get Out, we need to examine
a little known secret about Get Out that Jordan
Peele has so far only talked about in the
special features for the Blu-ray.
On the movie's commentary track, Peele revealed
that the group who are abducting black people
are actually descendants of the Knights Templar,
a Christian military order founded in 1119
and which took part in the Crusades.
There's a nod to this in the film with the
Templar helmet that Jeremy wears at the beginning
of the movie.
Peele also explained in the movie's commentary
that the cult carrying out the abductions
and transplant surgeries is called the "Red
Alchemist Society".
In fact, almost all the attendants at the
auction party who've come to bid on Chris's
body, wear some form of red, whether it's
a pocket handkerchief, red earrings, red in
their ties, red glasses, or red lipstick – a
little secret sign they're part of the Red
Alchemist Society.
So, it's intriguing that in Us, Adelaide's
double is called "Red" and the Tethered are
all dressed in red jumpsuits.
And notice also how Adelaide's pale-coloured
clothes get stained red with blood as the
film progresses, a clue to the twist ending
that Adelaide was originally one of the Tethered
before she escaped in 1986.
There are also some huge parallels between
The Sunken Place from Get Out and the underground
tunnels in Us where the Tethered are forced
to live.
In Get Out, the Sunken Place is a conceptual
space, somewhere that Chris sinks into, falling
below the surface while his captors remain
above peering down at him.
In Us, the Tethered exist below the surface
in abandoned underground areas which were
deliberately chosen in order to keep the experiments
a secret.
In Get Out, Chris's body is also literally
taken downstairs to the basement after he
falls into the Sunken Place for the second
time and it's also below ground level where
the actual brain surgery takes place.
Whenever he's trapped in the Sunken Place,
Chris becomes paralysed and loses control
over much of his body.
Likewise in Us, the Tethered have limited
control over their own bodies – think of
those images we see of them shuffling around
the tunnels, forced to imitate their counterparts
above the surface.
In both films, these characters have lost
much of their free will and autonomy over
their bodies after being subjected to the
secret society's experiments.
However, in each film, the victims of these
experiments also show some ability to break
out of their captivity.
In Us, Young Adelaide's doppelganger below
ground has some ability to act independently
of her counterpart above ground, and when
Adelaide visits the hall of mirrors and encounters
her double, the doppelganger takes initiative
and drags her down into the tunnels, then
switches places with her.
Also, after the Tethered are abandoned, Red
speaks of a moment years later when a "miracle
happened".
It seems like, at that point, the connection
between the Tethered and their counterparts
above was broken or weakened to the point
where the Tethered could now act independently
and, with the help of Red, they organised
a revolution to rise up from below and break
free.
In Get Out, the mad science that the Armitage
family employs to transfer brains and replace
the consciousness of the host bodies doesn't
quite work as they'd like it too as they have
to allow a tiny part of the original mind
to remain.
"The piece of your brain connected to your
nervous system needs to stay put,
keeping those intricate connections intact.
A sliver of you will still be in there somewhere.
Limited consciousness.
Your existence will be as a passenger.
An audience.
You'll live in..."
"the Sunken Place."
And we see examples in Get Out of where the
original consciousness seeps through or is
able to take back control over their body.
For example, when Chris photographs Logan,
the flash on the camera triggers Andre's mind
to take control and he's able to talk to Chris
warning him to "Get Out!"
There's also a moment in Get Out that reveals
which members of Rose's family might have
been connected with the experiments in Us.
When Chris wakes up after being imprisoned
in the family basement, the TV switches on
and plays a video where Rose's grandfather
Roman Armitage introduces the name of the
experiment that's about to be performed on
Chris as the Coagula Procedure.
"Our order has been developing it for many,
many years.
And it wasn't until recently that it was perfected...
by my own flesh... and blood."
Roman was a runner in the 1930s who lost to
Jesse Owens in the qualifying round for the
Berlin Olympics, and in the video Chris watches,
Roman reveals that The Red Alchemist Society
had been trying to develop the brain transplant
procedure for many years until his son Dean
had a breakthrough.
What that means is that if the secret society
were struggling with this attempt to transfer
their consciousness into new bodies, it's
quite possible that over the years as they
tried different procedures and ideas, at one
point they either deliberately or accidentally
created the Tethered.
For example, what if Red was wrong and the
Tethered weren't created to control people
above ground but instead were the result of
a Red Alchemist experiment that tried but
failed to create clones so members of the
Society could carry on living when their original
bodies died.
There's an interesting nod to Get Out's idea
of two minds sharing one body in the opening
scene of Us where you can see a VHS tape of
the movie "The Man With Two Brains" next to
the TV set.
"The Man With Two Brains" is an 80s sci-fi
comedy starring Steve Martin as a brain surgeon
working with a mad scientist who's developed
a technique to keep brains alive outside their
body.
And the pair end up transferring a living
brain from a murder victim into another person's
body.
Of course, Get Out's idea of two minds sharing
one body is flipped in Us where we have the
idea of two bodies sharing one mind.
A striking visual parallel between the films
is how we see tears flow down the faces of
the characters who've been experimented on.
What's common to each one is that they've
either been physically or mentally imprisoned
and are being confronted with the horror of
what the shadowy group have inflicted upon
them.
Chris tears up when Missy manipulates his
sadness about his dead mother and absent father
and hypnotises him, sending him into The Sunken
Place for the first time.
Adelaide cries when she's confronted by Red
in her home.
And Red herself also cries as she tells Adelaide
about the terrible physical and emotional
pain she went through as a Tethered individual
when she was forced to copy every action that
Adelaide took above ground.
In Get Out, when Chris talks to the housemaid
Georgina about being nervous around white
people, tears run down Georgina's face as
her original consciousness battles with the
transplanted brain that was forcibly implanted
in her.
And after Chris releases Walter from the Sunken
Place by flashing him with his camera, just
before Walter turns the gun on himself, a
single tear falls down his cheek, showing
his internal horror and mental torment as
he realises this is his only way out of the
prison that Rose's grandfather has placed
him in.
By the way, there could be an interesting
connection between how the flashes from Chris's
camera manage to free both Andre and Walter
from the Sunken Place and the lightning from
the electrical storm that was going on the
night that young Adelaide's double was able
to break out of the tunnels in Us.
Another shared idea in both movies is the
use of rabbits to signify the horror of the
situation at hand.
Jordan Peele has said that although he knows
the fluffy animals are adorable, he finds
their scissor-like ears terrifying.
In Get Out's opening scene, Flanagan and Allen's
classic song "Run Rabbit Run" plays while
Jeremy attacks and abducts Andre.
In Us, Adelaide tells her daughter Zora, who's
an athlete, to run during the Tethered's home
invasion.
And Zora also has rabbits printed on her clothes
such as this top here and the word on her
top in this scene is the Vietnamese word for
rabbit.
Like the Tethered, rabbits live underground,
are often used for experiments, and, to add
to the horror, raw rabbit was the Tethered's
only source of food when they lived below
the surface.
Another link from Us back to Get Out is the
bowl of dry Froot Loops on the table at the
Tylers' vacation home.
And during a scene there, Adelaide's son Jason
picks up a Froot Loop and eats it.
It's an intriguing nod to Get Out's creepy
scene of Rose eating a bowl of the brightly-coloured
sugary cereal one piece at a time and sipping
on a glass of milk while she looks for a new
victim.
So, do Get Out and Us signal the dawn of a
Jordan Peele Cinematic Universe?
Well, Peele himself has said that the two
movies are part of the same project and, around
the time of Get Out's release in 2017, he
also told Business Insider that he had four
other social thrillers he planned to release
in the next ten years.
So, that means there's another three left
to go in this series, and it seems quite possible
they'll connect to Get Out and Us in similar
ways.
Peele has explained that "The best and scariest
monsters in the world are human beings and
what we are capable of especially when we
get together."
He's said that he's been working on these
premises about these different social demons,
these innately human monsters that are woven
into the fabric of how we think and how we
interact, and each one of his movies is going
to be about a different one of these social
demons."
Peele could clearly use the Red Alchemist
Society as a secret group of antagonists that
connects across all his movies.
The series of films he's developing won't
be a shared universe like we've seen with
Marvel.
I expect that, as is already the case with
Us and Get Out, you'll be able to watch any
of Peele's films separately and enjoy them
regardless of whether you've seen the others.
However, spotting these connections will be
fun for fans of Peele's work especially as
the writer-director loves to packs each of
his movies with tons of easter eggs and references.
And if you missed any of the other crucial
easter eggs and hidden symbolism in Us, you
can tap here to watch my full breakdown of
all the secret clues that revealed the twist
ending.
Now, I'd love to hear about any other Get
Out connections or cool easter eggs you spotted
in Us.
Let me know in the comments below!
And if you enjoy more deep-dives, theories
and behind-the-scenes secrets about your favourite
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Tap left for that full breakdown of all the
secret clues you missed in Us or tap right
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Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!
