ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED!
Prequel Trilogy
- Luke calling a lightsaber a "laser sword" works as a call back to where Anakin called Qui-Gon's lightsaber a "laser sword" in The Phantom Menace, which in itself was a reference to what lightsabers were called in the early drafts.
- Luke refers to Emperor Palpatine as "Darth Sidious", which originated in the prequels, and Kylo Ren mentions the Sith, which was a name developed for the original films but not spoken on-screen until the prequels.
- The nature of the flashback sequence ends up being considerably evocative to the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, only with the roles reversed. The master tries to kill the apprentice in his sleep after fearing his student's power.
- The flashback sequence is also nearly identical to a moment in Obi-Wan and Anakin’s duel on Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith. After knocking Anakin down onto a table, Obi-Wan swings his saber down towards him, only for Anakin to use the Force to pull his own saber towards him to block the attack, as Kylo does with Luke.
- The scene where Kylo asks Rey to rule the galaxy with him, whilst she tearfully pleads with him to turn away from the dark side, and fire rains down around them in the background is evocative of the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Padmé confronts Anakin and he makes the same proposal. It ends about as well, too, though in this case, it's the villain who ends up unconscious on the ground.
- Rey and Kylo both struggle to take hold of Anakin's lightsaber using the Force, ultimately causing both of them to be knocked backwards. It's a more extreme and destructive version of a moment in Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel in Revenge Of The Sith when they both threw each other across the room using the Force.
- Kylo Ren betraying Snoke, killing him, and taking his place calls to mind the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis that Palpatine told Anakin in Revenge Of The Sith.
- Kylo's murder of Snoke and the battle with the Praetorian Guard is almost the exact inverse of Yoda's confrontation with Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. Yoda dispatched the Emperor's Guards using the Force with a single wave of his hand before engaging their master in a long and protracted duel, Kylo kills Snoke in a single use of the Force before fighting the royal guards in an intense and violent battle.
- Holdo ramming the Raddus into the Supremacy appears as a massive burst of light across an otherwise black screen, accompanied by dead silence, followed by a loud explosion, making it similar in both audio and video to the Slave I's seismic charges from Attack of the Clones.
- An overhead shot of Kylo Ren leading a march of snowtroopers into Crait's Rebel base is reminiscent of when his grandfather led a march of clone troopers into the Jedi Temple during Order 66 back in Revenge Of The Sith, and also to Vader's leading snowtroopers into the base on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
- The line "We are the spark that will light the fire that'll burn the First Order down." shares some relevant thematic connections to the ending of Matt Stover's Revenge of the Sith novel: "The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars."
- In the ending scene, a group of slave kids tell each other the legend of the Jedi before getting scolded by their master, and one of them (bonus points for being a blond boy) sneaks outside to look at the sky, just like Anakin and Luke grew up, as the Force theme plays.
Original Trilogy
- When Luke's artificial hand is observed closely, the blaster damage from Return of the Jedi can be seen on the back.
- Early during Rey's shadowing of Luke, she notices an original model X-wing sunken off the coast of the island they were on. This is reminiscent of Luke's training to become a Jedi during ''The Empire Strikes Back since one of his tasks was to raise his sunken X-wing from a swamp using the Force.
- As Rey is following Luke around as he does his daily routine, he collects some green milk from a Thala-siren. Luke was seen drinking blue milk back home in A New Hope.
- The elevator to Snoke's throne room is intentionally patterned after the elevator to the Emperor's throne in Return of the Jedi. Further parallels to both that film and Revenge Of The Sith are added as Rey tries to convince Kylo that there is still good in him, just like Luke did with Vader and Padmé did with Anakin.
- Snoke calls Rey "young fool", just like the Emperor called Luke in Return Of The Jedi.
- When Leia and Kylo Ren sense the presence of each other during a space battle, Shot/Reverse Shot is used between the two characters in the same way it did in The Empire Strikes Back with Luke and Vader. The use of cross-fades rather than straight cuts makes this reference more obvious.
- In A New Hope, Threepio tells Artoo to watch his language. Here, Luke berates Artoo for swearing when the droid recites the same series of beeps from that previous scene. Doubles as an Ascended Meme where the Internet community had posted memes where Artoo is the most censored character in movies.
- Luke tells Rey learning the Force isn't about lifting stones, as a nod to how Yoda taught him in The Empire Strikes Back.
- Rey leaves Ahch-To before she could complete her Jedi training with Luke, similar to what Luke himself had done many years ago when he was training with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke even notes the similarity when he tells her, "This will not go the way you think." Also on Ahch-To, Rey ventures into a dark side cave that ends with a confrontation with herself, just like Luke did on Dagobah.
- Yoda repeats the same chastisement to Luke from The Empire Strikes Back that Luke is not focusing on the present, and reminds him to pass on what he has learned.
- The First Order and the Resistance both use the same tactics for the assault on the Resistance's base on Crait as when the Empire attacking the Rebels on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back — walkers followed by a troop assault for the First Order, and trenches combined with a speeder attack for the Resistance.
- Luke's Force illusion is garbed in black and white robes. Fittingly, the Jedi Master returns looking as he did in Return of the Jedi, wielding the lightsaber he used in The Empire Strikes Back.
- Luke's warning to Kylo that if he strikes him down in anger then he'll always be with him is reminiscent of Obi-Wan's famous line to Darth Vader in A New Hope: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
- It also references Obi-Wan's line at the end of A New Hope: "The Force will be with you, always," turning a message of hope for a hero into an implied threat for a villain.
- The basic plot of the beginning — the outnumbered rebels having been traced to their base and rushing to evacuate it as the villains attack — is also very similar to The Empire Strikes Back.
- It's mentioned in The Empire Strikes Back that no ship the Falcon's size has a cloaking device. A few decades later, and it seems such ships can indeed now be equipped with such devices, though they aren't fool-proof if the enemy knows what they're looking for.
- When the First Order attacks, Admiral Ackbar dies in the same manner as Admiral Piett: killed when a fireball destroys the bridge.
- When Luke first sees R2, he lifts his head and takes off his hood, just as Obi-Wan did when meeting R2 in A New Hope.
- Poe's "I know." to Rey seems to be a deliberate reference to Han's famous response to Leia's Anguished Declaration of Love to him in The Empire Strikes Back.
- In A New Hope, Han gives Luke a brief lecture on the importance of having the right calculations when jumping to lightspeed, or you could crash into something. Admiral Holdo’s Heroic Sacrifice shows us exactly the kind of damage a ship travelling at lightspeed through another ship can do.
- If you blink, you'll miss it, but during Poe's mutiny, when Lt. Connix closes the bridge door, it closes in a stop-motion style, a clearly deliberate homage to the effects that were used to represent Death Star doors closing in A New Hope.
- When Leia ends Poe's mutiny by stunning him, she uses the same gun she used to fight off stormtroopers at the beginning of A New Hope.
- The First Order dreadnaught's turret guns being ill-suited in defending against fighter attack, requiring sending out TIE fighters, was the same design deficiency of the Death Star.
- Snoke forced Rey to watch the slaughter of the Resistance ships, just as Palapatine forced Luke to watch the Battle of Endor from his throne room in Return of the Jedi.
- The Falcon's dogfight with the TIE fighters over Crait mirrors the moves in the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back (as it did in The Force Awakens). The Falcon then dodges into some underground caverns, which look almost identical to the second Death Star's interior (Return of the Jedi); when the ship breaks back to the surface in a spray of red rock debris, it's an almost identical shot to the Falcon bursting out of the Death Star from the midst of a fiery explosion. Even the music score is identical.
- Luke's last scene is him gazing at a double sunset, as in the famous scene from A New Hope.
The Force Awakens
- In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren told Han Solo "I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it", shortly before murdering him. In The Last Jedi, Kylo tells Supreme Leader Snoke "I know what I have to do", shortly before killing him, too. Thematically, the circumstances are opposite: in TFA, Kylo was visibly tormented and struggling with the decision to murder his own loving and morally pure father, in TLJ, Kylo is calmly determined and resolute when he decides to assassinate his own cruel and tyrannical master. Kylo impaled Han on a unstable, demonic-looking dark red lightsaber when Han was in a moment of loving vulnerability, Kylo impales Snoke on a pure, almost angelic bright blue lightsaber when Snoke was in a moment of arrogant gloating.
- Finn and a female companion try to escape a pursuit through a nearby parked ship, only to have that ship blown up in front of them as they're racing toward it. The actual nod to this similarity is by Finn, who exclaims "Oh, come on!" upon the ship's destruction.
- Rey gazed out the window of the Falcon in astonishment during their landing on Takodana, saying that since growing up on a lifeless desert planet meant she'd "never thought there was this much green in the whole galaxy." There's a brief shot of her standing out in the rain with a delighted look on her face, letting the water dripping off the Falcon fall on her hand - another natural phenomenon she would rarely, if ever, have experienced on Jakku.
- Leia's line to Luke at Crait upon his arrival is what Han said to her in The Force Awakens:Leia: Now I know what you're thinking. [Beat] I changed my hair.
- When they meet up again, Rey compliments BB-8's new antenna. His was broken in the previous film and repaired by her.
- Rey is so excited to be the Falcon's gunner because she's only been the pilot before.
Anthology/Expanded Universe/Other
- The film's novelization begins with Luke having a dream in which he envisions a life he might have had if he had never left Tatooine. In it, for one, Luke married Camie
, who appeared in a deleted scene from A New Hope. - The Aftermath novel trilogy (as well as Phasma) provides background for Poe's Your Mom joke towards Hux: Hux is a Bastard Bastard.
- The Resistance's capital ship — the Raddus — is named after the Mon Calamari admiral who spearheaded the assault on Scarif at the end of Rogue One.
- In Rogue One, Admiral Raddus employed a spectacular variation of Ramming Always Works by ordering a ship to push a Star Destroyer into another Star Destroyer and then into the Imperial shield gate. How does The Last Jedi top this? By having Admiral Holdo ram the ship named after Raddus into Snoke's flagship at light speed.
- Hera used a lower scale version (hyperspace-jumping a U-Wing through the docking bay of a construction module) to escape from a chase scene in Rebels.
- In The Clone Wars' episode "Jedi Crash", a prematurely-triggered hyperdrive very nearly makes Anakin's ship jump while still docked with its cruiser. The devastation inflicted by Holdo's jump in TLJ casts the bridge crew's horrified "They'll take us with them!" in a whole new light.
- Admiral Holdo dying in a Heroic Sacrifice by ramming her cruiser into an enemy flagship after having her crew evacuate brings to mind Commander Sato and his Heroic Sacrifice in "Zero Hour" from Rebels.
- The hyperspace tracking technology being researched by the Empire and mentioned by Jyn in Rogue One is here a fully developed technology used by the villains.
- Briefly touched upon in Rebels, where the Empire stuck a regular tracker on the Ghost before it jumped into hyperspace. The intent was to send in Imperial forces after the Ghost dropped out of hyperspace—if the tracker was deactivated before then, then the Imperials would know, but the rebels evaded this problem by detaching that part of the ship while still in hyperspace.
- Finn hitting Captain Phasma in the face, creating a crack in her visor and showing her eye is similar to when Ahsoka did the same to Vader in "Twilight of the Apprentice" from Rebels.
- The allies of the Resistance refusing to send help at the Battle of Crait and the ending scene taking place in the Millennium Falcon with the battle's handful of survivors is reminiscent of Rebels episode "Zero Hour", in which the main Alliance refused to send help to Phoenix Squadron at the Battle of Atollon (though reinforcements from elsewhere managed to step in) and the ending scene took place in the Ghost with the battle's handful of survivors (though a few other ships survived the battle as well).
- Snoke wears a ring with an obsidian stone taken from Darth Vader's castle on Mustafar, which was first seen in Rogue One.
- The Blue Squadron in Rouge One is destroyed by Imperial forces during the battle on Scarif. In the battle with the First Order's dreadnought, Resistance loses their Cobalt Squadron -another named after the shade of blue.
