Film / Nope

Say "yeah"!

I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.

— Nahum 3:6

Nope is a 2022 neo-Western sci-fi horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. His third film after 2017's Get Out and 2019's Us, Peele additionally co-produced the film under his Monkeypaw Productions banner. It stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, with Brandon Perea, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Oz Perkins, Barbie Ferreira, Wrenn Schmidt, Terry Notary, Donna Mills, and Keith David in supporting roles. The film was released theatrically on July 22, 2022.

The film follows Otis "OJ" Haywood, Jr. (Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Palmer), a pair of siblings in southern California who run a ranch providing specially-trained horses for Hollywood movies, having inherited it from their father, Otis Haywood, Sr. (David), after he was killed by falling debris in a mysterious freak accident.

Several months after their father's death, the Haywood siblings notice that their horses are disappearing or behaving erratically, which might have something to do with the strange shapes and noises that seem to be coming from the sky. When the ranch's best horse is abducted in the dead of night, OJ and Emerald realize that they may have a genuine UFO on their hands. Driven as much by the promise of fame and fortune as by the desire to learn the truth about what killed their father, the two set about attempting to capture evidence of the phenomenon — only to get far more than they bargained for...

Previews: Teaser poster, first trailer, second trailer.

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Nope contains examples of:

• The '90s:
  • Gordy's attack on his human co-stars occurred in 1998, and was apparently the subject of a fictional Saturday Night Live sketch starring Chris Kattan. '90s pop cultural nostalgia comes up a lot in the dialogue, too.
  • In Jupe's exhibit dedicated to the Gordy's Home incident, there is a cover◊ of MAD Magazine which also mentions Dante's Peak, Third Eye Blind, and the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. However, all these events and the cover's publication date are from 1997, when the incident is shown to have occurred in 1998.
  • The intro for "Gordy's Home" released as promotional material is as stereotypically '90s as possible.
• Actor Allusion:
  • See Leaning on the Fourth Wall below.
  • Fynn, the director of the greenscreened commercial booked by OJ, Emerald, and Lucky, is played by Osgood Perkins, director of "You Might Also Like", the season finale of Jordan Peele's revival of The Twilight Zone
  • Terry Notary, who plays "Gordy", is a well-known motion capture performer particularly renowned for portraying apes. "Gordy" (or rather "one of the chimps that plays Gordy") is his first role as a violent, wild chimpanzee — in Dawn of and War for the Planet of the Apes, he played the peaceable Rocket, an ally of Andy Serkis' Caesar. He also took the titular role of Kong in Kong: Skull Island, an ironic connection, since the original King Kong is the story of a large animal being exploited for entertainment, only to turn violently on his exploiters.
• Admiring the Abomination: The Star Lasso Experience at Jupiter's Claim encourages audiences to look at the flying saucer. Doing so gets Jupe, his family, and everyone in the audience eaten.
• An Aesop: As with many of Peele's films, there are numerous layers of commentary to be unwrapped:
  • Don't ever be naïve enough to assume that you have a wild animal fully trained and under control, or that it won't interpret things that are benign to humans as threats to itself and react accordingly.
  • Attempting to make entertainment out of something dangerous will likely not go as planned, and always has the chance of ending in tragedy.
  • Training animals for entertainment is not a good life for them, as they still have instinctual behaviors that can't be tamed, no matter how much space or how many resources they have access to. At the same time, never anthropomorphize animals when you are working with them; misinterpreting animal behavior by attaching human emotions, motives, or morality to it can have fatal repercussions.
  • Learn to let go of the past and try to find a way to move forward from it, rather than dwell on it or try to make a profit from it. Those who don't learn from the past are often doomed to repeat it.
  • The entertainment industry is an exploitative business that grinds people up and only cares about their pain insofar as it can be made into a spectacle for profit.
  • Exploitation can be partly defined by the question of who is expected to accomodate whom.
• Alien Abduction: The UFO starts with horses, and moves on to people. Subverted, as Jean Jacket is simply eating anything unfortunate enough to be in its path.
• Aliens in Cardiff: The UFO targets a ranch in a small inland town nestled in the California desert. Since Jean Jacket is a wild animal, it likely did not "choose" this area for any particular reason beyond it having enough food and being far away from anything likely to harm it. OJ suggests that it may have settled in Agua Dulce because Jupe was feeding it, making it Justified.
• Aliens Steal Cattle: The UFO has been abducting the Haywood Ranch's horses, aided by Jupe using them as bait for it during the Star Lasso Experience. However, Jean Jacket isn't actually abducting them — the UFO is a living creature that's eating the horses. The creature turns its attention to humans once it gets the chance.
• Alliterative Name:
  • The horse-training ranch owned by the protagonists is named Haywood's Hollywood Horses.
  • OJ dubs the UFO "Jean Jacket" in the last act, after a horse Emerald was supposed to train as a child, but never got the chance to.
• All Animals Are Domesticated: Averted to horrifying and tragic effect. A running theme in the story is how people only think this is true with terrible results, especially for the Gordy's Home chimp rampage. Even domestic animals still need to be treated respectfully and with caution; OJ warns people on the set how to behave properly with his horse Lucky, and when they ignore him, they spook Lucky and almost get kicked.
• All There in the Script:
  • The credits reveal the TMZ reporter's name is Ryder Muybridge. (Additional Genius Bonus for this one: the film clip Emerald mentions of the African-American jockey riding the horse, whom Emerald claims to have been her great-great-great-grandfather, was made by early film pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, and the reporter is literally a motorcycle rider.)
  • The blonde woman sitting in the front row of the Star Lasso Experience with her husband and three kids is named Mrs. Dolan. She has no lines, but her name and actress are listed in the credits.
• And Starring: Keith David.
• Angst? What Angst?: Invoked and deconstructed in Jupe's case. He keeps a small private museum of Gordy's Home merchandise and memorabilia on the park grounds, and if you inquire about the chimp attack, will take you on an informal tour of the collection, chatting casually as he does so. But it's soon made clear that the trauma is still etched indelibly into his mind, and that he's trying to leverage his childhood pain by getting sickos to pay high prices for the experience (such as the Dutch couple who "spent the night" inside the room).
• Animal Motifs: Horses.
  • OJ and Emerald's great-great-great grandfather was the first person on film, shown in a two-second clip of him riding a horse.
  • OJ runs a horse training ranch, and the Star Lasso Experience uses horses as bait for Jean Jacket.
  • While horses can be tamed, they're still animals. Their behavior can be predicted and taken into account, but they're still prone to acting on wild instinct if set off. Jean Jacket (named after a horse) is a predator that resembles a flying saucer. While Ricky thinks he tamed it by feeding it horses, it eats him and his audience during his first public display after they all stare up at it, which it views as a sign of aggression and reacts accordingly to.
  • The second poster features a horse being pulled into the sky towards the black cloud. Another poster is a close-up image of a horse's eye.
• Apes in Space: This was the basic premise behind Gordy's Home, the sitcom Ricky "Jupiter" Park starred in as a child.
• Arc Number: A subtle example. Jupe says to OJ and Emerald that the Gordy's Home incident took place over 6 minutes and 13 seconds, and in his Star Lasso Experience speech, he says that it was 6:13 p.m. when he first saw the flying saucer. There's also the fact that the film opens on a quote from Nahum 3:6, although that only includes one of the numbers and inverts the order.
• Arc Words:
  • "Nope" is used several times to various effects. See Title Drop below.
  • The word "spectacle" is used in several different contexts. The word appears in a Bible quote at the start of the film, and Ricky Park refers to the Star Lasso Experience as a spectacle.
  • The word "impossible" also completes Antlers Holst's arc.
• Artistic License – Biology: The Chinese praying mantis depicted in the film is diurnal and wouldn't have been active at night.
• Artistic License – History: The film clip Emerald shows of her great-great-great-grandfather is plate 626 from Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion. It was published in 1887, and Muybridge had been making similar cabinet cards since 1878, so Emerald's claim that this is the very first assembly of photographs to create the illusion of motion isn't quite accurate. Of course, this story is part of the sell for Haywood Hollywood Horses, so some in-universe creative exaggeration isn't out of the question. For what it's worth, the 1878 film was also a quick loop of a black man on a horse, but the rider◊ has since been identified as most likely Gilbert Domm, and Muybridge's earliest sequence, taken several days before, is of the black horse trainer C. (Charles) Marvin riding in a small drawn wagon.
• Artistic License – Physics: Coins falling from great heights do not have the force to kill people due to wind resistance. In fact, a coin reaches terminal velocity in our atmosphere after only a few dozen feet, and its impact to a human is merely a sharp sting. Somewhat justified later in the film when Jean Jacket is looming over the Haywoods' house, as it appears to be spitting its indigestible matter out hard enough to achieve sub-sonic velocities; some of the bits of debris get embedded in the house's steps. Even so, the coin that killed Otis Sr. clearly went in through his eye socket, and Jean Jacket would have been hiding high up in the clouds at the time.
• Asshole Victim: Ricky's kids play a mean prank on OJ and let one of his horses loose in retaliation for stealing one of their father's display horses, and a nosy TMZ reporter arrives at the ranch, who is pretty rude and condescending to Emerald while she's trying to warn him away. All of them end up being eaten by the alien.
• As the Good Book Says...: The film opens with a quote from Nahum 3:6.
  I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The Haywood siblings seem fairly antagonistic towards each other for their first few scenes together, until Emerald convinces OJ to get drunk and reminisce about their father; OJ immediately suggests that they should smoke some of his hobby weed as well ("hobby weed" is the six plants of marijuana California citizens are legally allowed to grow for personal use). After that, they have a much warmer sibling relationship, particularly when they do their celebratory low-five handshake.
  Emerald: I guess you don't wanna see what's good with Dad's liquor cabinet, then?
  (A beat. OJ stops walking...)
  OJ: I got that hobby weed, too, actually.
  Emerald: Oh, you got that hobby?
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The first thirty or so seconds of the trailer seems like a dramedy about the film industry, with the brother and sister that own the ranch set to butt heads over business... and then the lights go out...
  • Rather than a ship with aliens inside, the UFO is itself an alien. As such, there is no traditional Alien Invasion as one might have come to expect from glimpses of the trailers.
  • The first third of the film teases the idea of it being an alien invasion narrative, then transitions into becoming a horrific monster movie, and in its final third becomes more of a pulse-pounding heist story of sorts.
  • Right when the protagonists are about to start their plan at the climax, a man in black on a motorcycle wearing a fully-mirrored helmet approaches the house. He speaks cryptically about the ranch's proximity to Jupiter's Claim, the cloud not moving, and the area being blurry on Google Maps, appearing to be a government agent. Then he pulls out a camera and asks Em what really happened to the people who disappeared at the Star Lasso Experience, revealing that he's actually a TMZ reporter.
• Balloon of Doom: Gordy's violent rampage kicked off when the chimp actor was startled by a balloon popping in the hot studio lights. As more balloons went off, the chimp continued his rampage. Jean Jacket is also basically a giant living balloon in its true form as seen at the end, and is itself is killed by a giant balloon popping.
• Be Careful What You Say: Just before the start of the Star Lasso Experience, Jupe tells the audience, "I swear on my wife and children's lives that at 6:13 PM, I saw a flying saucer descend through the mist." The only problem is that Jean Jacket isn't a flying saucer but a wild extraterrestrial predator animal — and both his wife and children will lose their lives as a result of this mistake.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Early on, Emerald laments that she wants "fun OJ" back. He does eventually start having fun — planning how to get the perfect shot of Jean Jacket just when she wants to get away.
  • Antlers Holst gets his perfect shot. However, he's so overwhelmed by the sight of Jean Jacket, he goes out to film it and gets devoured by it, recording it all the while.
• Big "YES!": Emerald lets out several after her plan to kill the alien once and for all in the end is successful.
• Birthday Episode: In-universe, this is what the Gordy's Home crew were filming the day the chimpanzee actor attacked. The script involved opening a big present that would release several balloons into the air. Unfortunately, the heat from the studio lights caused the balloons to pop, which made the already agitated chimp actor go nuts and start attacking everyone.
• Bittersweet Ending: At least 40 people and many of the Haywoods' horses get eaten, but the Haywoods manage to kill the alien AND get a photo of it before it dies, which hopefully will be just what they need to get out of the downward financial spiral they are in.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: invoked Jean Jacket's insides resemble billowing nylon cloth, and it can somehow bunch itself up into a compact saucer shape with only one "mouth" opening, even though its true form is a jellyfish-like organism. Somehow, it’s able to both generate an EMP field that shuts down electronics (and which is presumably part of the process enabling it to fly) and generate a perfectly stationary cloud around itself for camouflage — both common elements of UFO sightings.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: How Jean Jacket can tell it's being looked at without eyes is ambiguous, let alone whether it even has eyes. Notably, in its "unfolded" form, it can tell when OJ and Em are looking at it even when they're behind it and its "eye" isn't directly pointed at them. However, it can’t tell fake eyes apart from real eyes, at one point attempting to eat a horse statue it mistakes for a real horse. It also tries to eat a giant cartoon cowboy balloon, and OJ is able to get it to chase him with fake eyes taped onto the hood of his jacket.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: As a child actor in Gordy's Home, Ricky was right in front of Gordy as he was gunned down by arriving police, and the ape's blood splatters all over him, as if he wasn't already traumatized enough having to watch the chimp rip apart the other cast members.
• Bookends:
  • A balloon kicks off Gordy the chimp's rampage in the beginning, and another, much larger balloon is used to kill Jean Jacket at the end.
  • The Haywoods' conflict with the UFO starts when it spits up a coin that goes through their father's eyeball and kills him. Their relationship with it ends when Emerald uses some fallen coins to activate the hand-cranked well camera in Jupiter's Claim to take a photo of the UFO right before it's killed.
  • The movie opens with the framed two-second clip of the black jockey on a horse. The movie ends with a shot of OJ on a horse, framed by the rectangular Out Yonder archway.
  • The first audio we hear is from the Gordy's Home sitcom, in which the chimp is exploited for entertainment. The last audio we hear is reporters swooping in on Jupiter's Claim, likely about to exploit the death of Jean Jacket for entertainment.
• Bringing Back Proof: The cusp of the story revolves around the Haywood siblings trying to prove that a UFO is haunting the area around their ranch by getting definitive footage of it (which they dub "the Oprah shot"). This is complicated by the fact the UFO in question causes electronics to turn off as it passes over and absolutely hates being looked at. It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but Emerald is finally able to get the Oprah shot at the very end using the old-timey well camera at Jupiter's Claim, which does not use electricity.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • The TMZ reporter isn't around for long, but in that time he reveals himself as completely out of his element (showing up with electronic cameras on an electronic motorcycle), gets flung from said motorcycle at high enough speed that Emerald assumes he must be dead from impact, doesn't die from said impact, gets painfully picked up by OJ in an attempt to save him, and then gets left behind to be eaten when Jean Jacket suddenly reappears. And the whole time, he seems more concerned about getting footage of the alien than his clearly broken limbs.
  • Mary Jo Elliot's two scenes involve her having her face permanently mutilated by a chimp and being eaten alive by Jean Jacket.
• Call-Back: In the beginning of the film, a horse gets spooked when it sees itself in a mirror while shooting a commercial. Later, the TMZ reporter who gets knocked off his bike by Jean Jacket is wearing a mirrored helmet, and Jean Jacket reacts just as aggressively. Realizing this is going to happen, Otis immediately abandons the injured biker.
• Casting Gag:
  • Keith David starred in the iconic '80s alien movies They Live! and The Thing, the latter of which involves a predatory, shapeshifting alien creature attacking animals and a small community in a stark landscape; in The Thing, David also played one of the two characters who makes it all the way to the end credits. In Nope, David plays the legendary, "Hollywood royalty" horse trainer Otis Haywood Sr. — widely renowned as a professional — (and is killed first.)
  • Fynn, the director of the commercial, finds Emerald and O.J. disappointing after Otis's death and seems to regard them as nepotism hires. He's played by Osgood Perkins, a horror director in his own right, who is also the son of Anthony Perkins (most famous for his role in Psycho).
• Cat Scare:
  • As Emerald keeps an eye on the outdoor cameras to try and spot the UFO, a huge creature suddenly shows up on camera A with a Scare Chord...that turns out to be a harmless praying mantis crawling on the lens. As Emerald goes to brush it off, however, she misses that camera B just went offline...
  • As Angel observes the Haywood ranch from his job at Fry's, the lights go off in the store... only for the camera to pan over to the manager with his hand on the light switch as he locks up for the evening.
  • A moment later, dramatic music builds up to a scare...that turns out to just be Angel's coworker Nessie checking in on him, although her speaking right behind him while he's focused on the ranch's cameras definitely gives him a jolt.
• Central Theme: As stated by Jordan Peele, the movie is about the nature of spectacle, the human addiction to it, and the insidious nature of attention.
• Cheated Death, Died Anyway:
  • Ricky/Jupe and Mary-Jo both survived the ape attack (in Mary-Jo's case, after having her face torn off) as kids, but are both then sucked up and eaten by the UFO.
  • The TMZ reporter, who survives a brutal motorcycle crash only to be devoured by Jean Jacket shortly after. Angel even says "No way he's alive after that [crash]", moments before the guy screams in agony.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Otis Sr. is killed by a nickel that fell from the sky. It later emerges that Jean Jacket regurgitates anything that it can't digest, including metal objects, and Otis Sr had the bad luck to be struck by the nickel after Jean Jacket spat it out. Later, Jean Jacket spits out the plastic horse statue that Otis Jr. and Emerald used as a lure, and still later Angel manages to prevent himself from getting eaten by wrapping himself in a tarp and barbed wire, which causes Jean Jacket to spit him out in turn.
  • The wishing well camera at Jupiter's Claim is completely mechanical, which lets Emerald use it to take a photo of Jean Jacket.
  • The Kid Sheriff balloon at Jupiter's Claim is very prominent in the film's viral marketing campaign and the scenes depicting the park itself. Emerald uses it to explode Jean Jacket from the inside by using it as a lure filled with pressurized air.
  • While driving back home after being fired from the film set, Emerald and OJ pass a car dealership with numerous waving tube men out front. When they set up a plan in the climax to get Jean Jacket on film, Emerald steals the tube men and sets them up around their ranch to act as a makeshift motion-detection system; when Jean Jacket passes over any particular tube man, it will deflate, signifying its presence even when it's hidden in the clouds.
  • Early in the film, the UFO sucks up a horse statue with a rainbow pennant that was stuck to it. After realizing the UFO is actually a living animal, OJ surmises that it was agitated by eating a fake horse and predicts that it now associates the pennant with something inedible or unpleasant. He's able to get the alien to swerve away from him in the climax by releasing a rainbow pennant attached to a small parachute behind him.
  • While at Fry's Electronics purchasing security cameras for their ranch, Emerald also buys a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Later on, one of the security cameras is blocked by a curious praying mantis, preventing it from filming the UFO, Emerald tries to dislodge it by throwing the candies at the insect. It's subverted in that she doesn't manage to actually hit the mantis before the UFO leaves.
  • After Emerald steals the plastic horse, Jupe pulls up and invites the Haywoods to a preview of the Star Lasso Experience, taking out a flyer which then blows away in the wind. OJ later finds it underneath a pile of horse dung and realizes what Jupe has been doing with the horses he's been selling him, leaving to go get Lucky - the horse he will ride for the rest of the film - back before he can feed him to the UFO.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The various news crew. They initially appear to cover the disappearance at Jupiter's Claim, then later on arrive en masse in the immediate aftermath of Jean Jacket's seeming death, having witnessed it, ensuring that Jean Jacket's existence will be backed by their own testimonies.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • OJ's knowledge as a horse trainer comes in handy because he realizes the reason the UFO is attacking is because it's a living animal that hates being looked at directly and only gets aggressive when its boundaries aren't respected. OJ and his sister are then able to get the better of the alien in the climax by using their knowledge of animal behaviour to predict how it will act.
  • When Emerald tries to promote herself at the commercial production, one of the skills that she mentions is riding motorcycles. She later takes the TMZ journalist's bike in order to escape Jean Jacket.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Jean Jacket unfolds into a gigantic, ominous jellyfish shape after being injured from briefly swallowing barbed wire. This allows it to handle its prey before eating it, but it also appears to slow it down and doesn't provide it with any other abilities.
• Coins for the Dead: A poetic variant with Otis Sr. — rather than coins being laid over his eyes in death, a coin is the thing to kill him by piercing his eye.
• Color-Coded Characters: Towards the end of the film, both OJ and Emerald wear outfits fitting to their names: OJ wears an orange hoodie, and Emerald wears a bright green shirt and bandana.
• Company Cross References:
  • Jupe's first scene has a monologue about an SNL skit (owned by NBC Universal) that parodied Gordy's rampage.
  • Later, Em and OJ have a conversation about the horse she was supposed to ride that ended up going to him. It was for a job on The Scorpion King, also owned by Universal Studios.
  • Finally, a set of golden scissors — which look virtually identical to the weapons used by the Tethered in Jordan Peele's previous film Us — can be briefly seen on Jupe's desk during his meeting with OJ and Emerald.
• Contrived Coincidence: A praying mantis blocks the lens of one of the cameras, keeping the Haywoods from capturing the UFO on film early on. As if just to rub it in, the mantis immediately leaves after the UFO flies off.
• Cowboy: Fitting the Western elements of the movie, Jupe has some flashy cowboy garb and puts on his own rodeo show. The strong, silent rancher OJ, who loves horses, is a much more typical cowboy personality-wise, but with none of Jupe's stereotypical dress.
• Credits Gag: The closing credits refer to cinematographer Antlers' mention of "Golden Hour" by appearing against an orange background that slowly fades to black as the credits roll.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Otis Sr. dies by way of a nickel falling into his eye from above and piercing through to part of his brain, leaving him delirious and bleeding heavily until he passes away while being driven to the hospital.
  • Gordy the chimp mauls several people on the set of his sitcom.
  • Jean Jacket devours several horses and people, slowly crushing them as they are digested over the course of hours.
  • The TMZ guy is treated similarly while also suffering agonising motorcycle injuries.
• Deadpan Door Shut: When OJ's car stalls in an unusual rainstorm, he suspects it's the UFO at work. Curious, he opens the door, cautiously peeks out, and sees the massive object looming overhead like an enormous eye in the storm. OJ immediately shuts the door, muttering, "Nope."
• Death by Cameo: Two of the eventual casualties during the Star Lasso Experience massacre were played by the owner of the defunct Fry's Electronics chain, Randy Fry, and his wife, TV anchor Vicki Liviakis; they're the spectators next to the Icee machine.
• Death by Looking Up:
  • Otis Sr. dies when he curiously stares up into the sky during the rain of mundane objects, letting a nickel strike him in the eye. In all likelihood, had he not looked, he'd have lived with possible brain damage when it struck his skull instead.
  • The UFO devours anyone who looks directly at it from below. In fact, the protagonists learn that NOT looking up at it is the only way to avoid its attention.
• Death of a Child: Not even children are safe from the aerial abomination. At The Star Lasso Experience, Jupe's three sons get eaten by Jean Jacket, along with him, his wife, and everyone else sitting in the stands including the children from the family sitting in the front row. If observed closely, some of them can be seen pulled out of their seats and dragged across the sand. The little girl even claws at the ground desperately before she's yanked upwards and her shadow joins the others. Fortunately for the audience, we don't get to see any of their deaths. Horrifyingly, we still hear them.
• Depth Deception: One of the first things shown in the movie appears to be a metallic featureless hallway, from which a constant gust of wind comes. Given the presence of aliens, this at first appears to be a hallway in their ship, with the black square at the end being shadow. Turns out, it's no corridor leading backwards, it's a massive eye; the eye of the "UFO" to be exact, silently watching its prey.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Discussed, with OJ wondering if there's such a thing as a "bad" miracle. Jean Jacket is ultimately revealed to be an invoked example: its origin — if it could conceivably have any — isn't explained, it literally comes down from the sky, and it has nothing comprehensible as a "motive" other than hunger and pure animal stimulus-response behavior.
• Didn't Think This Through: The protagonists make a plan to capture the UFO on film and then drive it off using flags, since it now knows to fear them. Despite a rough start, they get the evidence they were looking for. Then it comes back and deliberately attacks them, pissed off at being provoked.
• Disney Death: The climax has OJ facing Jean Jacket directly in order to lure the monster away from his sister so he can get away, presumably being eaten alive as a result. The very last shot shows him reuniting with Em while riding Lucky.
• Distant Prologue: The film begins in 1998, when a chimpanzee actor named Gordy turned on and mauled his human co-stars during a live taping of their television show. The events of the plot take place in September 2022, going off the date on Jupe's flyer.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The entire sequence where Antlers Holst is furiously cranking his non-electrical camera right at Jean Jacket so he can capture his "Impossible Shot" is framed to make it look like he's firing a machine gun or other firearm rather than cranking the camera. Holst's anguished cry of rage and satisfaction as he's pulled up into Jean Jacket's mouth also looks disconcertingly orgasmic.
• Doing It for the Art: In-Universe, Antlers Holst, a famous cinematographer, helps the Haywoods in their mission to capture footage of the UFO, even though Emerald admits they can't pay him, because he wants to get "the impossible shot". He admits that he tends to do larger works just so he can do smaller, more artistic films.
  Holst: Well, I already do one for them [i.e. commercial projects], so I can do one for me.
• Don't Look At Me:
  • Jean Jacket hates being looked at, attacking and killing anything that looks up at it, and letting those live who keep their heads down. OJ eventually realizes this is because it's a territorial, predatory animal; just like many animals, it thinks people looking at it are challenging it.
  • It's also implied that being stared at by the entire studio audience is a big part of what set off Gordy.
  • Jupe's onscreen sister from Gordy's Home was horribly mauled by the chimp, and while she survived the attack, she now wears a veil to go out in public.
• Downer Beginning: After the brief flashback to Gordy’s rampage, the opening scene depicts Otis Sr. and OJ tending to the ranch until Otis Sr. gets a coin lodged into his brain due to Jean Jacket regurgitating it. While OJ drives his father to the hospital, he dies on the way there.
• Drone of Dread: An ominous synth drone swells beneath the "from Jordan Peele" credit in the trailer. It is the same sound the UFO makes when it is first seen at the ranch during the film proper.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The three protagonists are seen smoking weed and drinking at Angel's apartment after narrowly escaping the ranch house.
• Eaten Alive: Jean Jacket devours Ricky, as well as his family and audience, in an uncomfortably long sequence featuring internal shots of the alien's bizarre digestive anatomy. It's implied that the screaming indicates they're alive inside of the alien for some time before being digested, because it had trouble with the fake horse it ate before.
• Electromagnetic Pulse: The UFO temporarily shuts off any electronics in its vicinity. In the climax, the protagonists exploit this by setting up a network of battery-operated tube men so that if Jean Jacket moves over them, they will turn off and reveal its position.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: When the blackout happens, the record that Emerald is dancing to grinds to a slow, distorted halt. It is later revealed that it has to do with the UFO's ability to shut down any electronics in its vicinity. Under its presence, if someone is on the phone with someone or using walkie talkies, the receiver's voice will receive the same effect as the record due to the electronic components shutting down.
  • The effect this has on Angel's radio playing "Sunglasses at Night" is included on the official soundtrack as the "Jean Jacket remix".
• Entertainingly Wrong: The characters (including Ricky) initially think the Flying Saucer is some kind of highly advanced alien spacecraft that's trying to covertly research humans, but halfway through OJ realizes it's alive, when it's "abducting" things it's actually eating them, and it's no more intelligent than a regular animal.
• Establishing Character Moment: OJ struggles through introducing the family business to a film crew for the first time since his father died, trying and failing to get them to take animal safety seriously. He's a Shrinking Violet who is very good at working with animals and understands how they think. Emerald then shows up late and gives a speech that charms the pants off of everyone, demonstrating her Blithe Spirit and natural charisma.
• "Eureka!" Moment: OJ finds a flyer for Jupe's "Star Lasso Experience" and realizes what he's been doing with the horses he's been sold.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: One of the first signs that something's wrong during the blackout is a horse bolting and knocking over OJ.
• Eye Am Watching You: Becomes a gesture of bonding between OJ and Emerald via Meaningful Echo, also tying into the film's motif of what it means to look at/see something or someone. As we see in a flashback, OJ did the gesture to Emerald as a child when their father was showing him how to train a horse that Emerald was meant to train. In the climax, OJ does the gesture to Emerald twice before looking directly at Jean Jacket, and Emerald returns it in kind.
• Eye Scream: OJ and Emerald's father is killed in the beginning of the movie when a nickel suddenly falls out of the sky (along with other random metal debris) and hits him right in his right eye as he was looking up. We get a lovely shot of his corpse with a coin-shaped wound in his bloodied eye socket.
• Facial Horror: Mary Jo Elliott, the young actress on Gordy's Home, had her lips bitten off by the titular chimp. As chimpanzee attack survivors go, she's actually incredibly lucky in that she still has her nose and eyes.
• Famous Ancestor: Horse rancher Emerald Haywood states that her and her brother's great-great-great-grandfather was the first man on film, the jockey who appeared in Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion.
  Em: There's another "great"!
• Fatal Method Acting: In-Universe, the shooting of an episode of Gordy's Home turned tragic when the chimpanzee who played Gordy went on a rampage. He killed the actor who played the father, mauled the actress who played their daughter, injured the actress who played the mother, and was himself shot dead.
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Played mostly seriously. The smarter characters, upon seeing the supernatural nonsense around them, promptly mutter "Nope!" or a variation, and back off. This is a good indication that the character will survive the scene, since it eventually turns out that the UFO takes any kind of eye contact as a personal challenge.
• Feed It a Bomb: Emerald is able to kill Jean Jacket by tricking it into attacking the giant Kid Sheriff balloon. When it tries to swallow the balloon, it pops inside of the alien, blowing it up.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • The leadup to Otis Sr.'s death features a radio report about a group of missing hikers. Before the scene is over, Jean Jacket expels a rain of metallic objects — the undigested personal effects of what used to be the hikers — and a nickel falls out of the clouds to pierce Otis through the eye and lodge in his brain.
  • In his opening speech at the Star Lasso Experience, Jupe "[swears] on [his] wife and children's lives" that what he's about to show his audience is a flying saucer. As it turns out minutes later, he's wrong about that, and his wife and children — along with him and his audience — do indeed pay with their lives.
  • In the climax after Em does her sliding bike stop in Jupiter's Claim, you can see the park's exit sign in the background, which reads, "So Long, Cowboy." In the next scene, she releases the park's giant inflatable cowboy to bait Jean Jacket into position for a picture and then kill it.
• Fluffy the Terrible: A man-eating, technology-blacking, sentient UFO... is nicknamed "Jean Jacket". It Makes Sense in Context, as Jean Jacket was the name of a horse Em's father promised she could tame, but he never gave her the chance.
• Flying Saucer: Played with. It seems to be a flying saucer at first, but it turns out to be a living thing rather than a ship, and the saucer shape turns out to just be the form it takes when it's keeping a low profile.
• Fourth Wall Psych: The movie begins with a clothed chimpanzee covered in blood wandering around a film set with what appears to be a body partly obscured by a couch. The chimp takes off its party hat, turns to stare directly at the camera, and then the scene ends. Only much later do we find out that the scene was actually being shown from Ricky's perspective, with the scene being depicted again, with more context added.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When the camera is panning across the Gordy's Home set, Tom, who played the dad, can be seen trying to hide in a fake staircase.
  • During the Star Lasso Experience, Jupe's wife Amber appears to be the first person to be sucked up by Jean Jacket.
• Funny Background Event:
  • When the Haywoods and Angel are in a fast-food joint after narrowly escaping the UFO with their lives, two rival sports team fans can be seen getting into a fight through the diner window.
  • When Jean Jacket appears at the Star Lasso Experience, while the rest of the audience is eagerly looking up at it, an employee in a red hat can be seen quickly grabbing her backpack, as if she's decided "Nope!" and is getting out of there. Unfortunately, she's not fast enough.
• Genre Throwback: The film is very much in the style of 1950s-era science fiction pulp magazine stories, when flying saucers were all the rave. In particular, the idea that flying saucers were actually living organisms rather than alien spaceships, and that anecdotal stories of rainfalls of blood could be explained by these creatures sucking up and devouring people, was once a very popular concept amongst UFO theorists in The '50s before it fell out of favor to stories of The Greys and Alien Abduction in The '60s and beyond. In that sense, this film is subverting a modern audience's expectations by baiting them with the modern concept of UFOs and aliens, and then reverting to a more classical popular conception, albeit one that is largely obscure today.
• Ghost Town: Jupiter's Claim is styled after an old Wild Western town, with a general store, saloon, and other such buildings. It becomes a literal ghost town when OJ arrives after Jean Jacket has eaten everyone there, with the only sound being the closing time PA message playing on repeat.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Jean Jacket abducts people by summoning a dust devil and sucking them into its mouth. While we do see people getting eaten and swallowed, we don't actually see anyone get digested. We do, however, hear everyone screaming in pain and distress while being slowly melted down. Even worse, this further aggravates the alien, and it crushes its prey to have silence. It proceeds to rain down a shower of blood and whatever it couldn't digest moments later.
  • We do see some of Gordy's rampage, but his victims are obscured either by a couch, a kitchen door, or clever editing, such as cutting to black with only the sounds right before the mayhem starts.
• The Greys: The alien-themed Western amusement park, Jupiter's Claim, sells plushies of these as part of its marketing. They also are responsible for messing with the lights in the stable... except it's just Jupe's kids playing a prank as revenge for Emerald stealing a display horse. Angel also speculates about "the little guys with the big eyes" being at the centre of the movie's mystery. The art book puts a gross spin on it by speculating that the humanoid gray alien corpses found at supposed crash sites were the partially-digested remains of humans half-melted by digestive juices...
• Handshake Substitute: Ricky tells Emerald that the show Gordy's Home invented the exploding fist bump. This is played for horror and tragedy later on in a flashback of the infamous incident associated with the show. After Gordy horrifically mauls three members of his show's cast, the ape spots Ricky hiding under a table and, no longer in a fight-or-flight rage, goes in for a fist bump with a blood-soaked hand. Ricky, apparently not knowing what else to do, slowly goes in to reciprocate, but Gordy is shot dead by police before the two touch.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?: Emerald briefly mentions having had female lovers, and checks out a woman at Fry's, but that's really the only hint of any kind of sexuality in the film (aside from Angel having had a girlfriend who recently broke up with him).
• Hell Is That Noise:
  • Screaming horses and later, screaming people. More often than not, it means the UFO is near, either because they're reacting to it or they've been eaten by it and aren't dead yet. Although, given the horse sounds Jean Jacket makes before the Star Lasso Experience, it's possible the alien learned to mimic its prey.
  • The deep "clicking" noises that Jean Jacket makes when it approaches, usually right before it sucks up its target.
  • In the climax, Jean Jacket’s ominous droning hum as it unfurls into its expanded form after Angel injures it.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Jean Jacket had been living in the valley for at least six months by using a cloud as its lair when it's not hunting. Angel eventually discovers this because the specific cloud it's in never moves — something he only catches when looking at sped-up footage.
• History Repeats: When he was a boy, Ricky was part of the cast of a sitcom with an animal cast member as its selling point, only for the animal to go rogue and viciously attack his co-star family. As an adult man, Ricky orchestrates a new show with an otherworldly animal as its selling point, only for the animal to attack everyone in the audience, including his family and Ricky himself.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Jean Jacket appears to kill ingested prey by a process which involves extreme pressure within its body, judging by the horrifying crunching sounds we hear, followed by a Rain of Blood. This ends up killing Jean Jacket at the end when it tries to do the same to a giant helium balloon, turning the balloon into a pressurized air bomb that blows the alien up when it pops.
• Homage:
  • The scene where the UFO unleashes a torrent of blood and the partially digested remains of its victims may have been inspired by the Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876.
  • Angel pointing out the one cloud that never seems to move might be a reference to a very similiar scene in the '50s scifi movie The Crawling Eye.
  • The climax feels a little like Tremors, with a gigantic, faceless, eating machine chasing people in a Western setting around the desert in broad daylight, and the heroes having to rely on trickery and problem-solving to defeat it. The difference, of course, is that it's in the sky instead of under the ground.
• Hollywood Darkness: All of the night scenes were actually filmed during the day.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: A bit deconstructed. While Gordy and Jean Jacket are aggressive and end up taking human lives, the fact is that they're animals (in Jean Jacket's case, an extraterrestrial animal) who are simply acting on instinct. Meanwhile, a strong theme of the movie is no matter how pure the intentions of people may be, there is a very real danger that comes from being ignorant of and anthropomorphizing animal behavior, something that should be especially considered greatly when handling animals in show business.
• Humor Dissonance: In-universe, the Gordy's Home incident supposedly got both a MAD cover and a Saturday Night Live sketch dedicated to it, despite being a genuine tragedy that involved the death of an animal and a human actor, as well as the brutal maiming of a second human actor, the young girl getting her face ripped apart, as well as a third human actor getting her hand mutilated.
• Hungry Menace: Jean Jacket is simply an extraterrestrial carnivore that acts on its natural instincts. Unfortunately, this includes hunting humans, which makes Jean Jacket the antagonist of the story.
• Inspired by…:
  • Jordan Peele, the man who revived The Twilight Zone for the second time in the twenty-first century, is no doubt aware of the film's thematic similarity to the classic series' famous episode "To Serve Man", in which the Kanamits, benign-seeming aliens, arrive in flying saucers to make contact with humanity but are in fact harvesting them for food.
  • Osgood Perkins, the director of the modern-day revival Twilight Zone episode "You Might Also Like", cameos in Nope in the role of Fynn, director of the commercial from which the Haywoods are fired. "You Might Also Like" is a sequel to "To Serve Man" in which the Kanamits continue manipulating and experimenting on human subjects.
  • The "Gordy's Home" incident bears similarity to Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, in which the supposed serial killer is revealed to be a confused orangutan.
    • It also bears distinct similarity to the real event of the mauling of Charla Nash by a chimpanzee named Travis who was a former animal actor. Nash survived the attack, but her face was destroyed, much like Mary Jo in the movie, and Travis, like Gordy, was ultimately shot by police.
• I Want My Mommy!: When everyone at the Star Lasso Experience gets sucked up into Jean Jacket, a child can be heard crying out for their mother.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The film is divided into several parts that are named after animals with a key role to play in the plot (Ghost, Clover, Gordy, Lucky, Jean Jacket).
• Ignored Expert: The film crew completely ignores OJ's instructions on how to act around Lucky. One guy ends up showing Lucky his reflection very close to his face, startling the horse and causing it to kick. Nobody gets hurt, but the incident still gets the Haywoods fired.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Zigzagged. During Gordy's rampage, one adult member of the cast is gruesomely killed, while the another adult actor and the two child actors survive (although one child actor is horrifically disfigured and the other is horrifically traumatized). The child actors are both killed by the alien later on, but this is years later when both of them are adults. This is averted in that same scene when Ricky's kids and several children in the audience are also eaten by the alien.
• Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: The UFO gives off an anti-electrical field that turns off all electronics within a certain distance from it. The TMZ reporter, not knowing this, rides an electric motorcycle right into the field at sixty miles per hour, resulting in the motorcycle abruptly stopping dead in its tracks and him going flying. This is mainly for dramatic effect, though, as an electric motorcycle in that scenario would coast to a halt, not suddenly flip as if the front brakes (which are still hydraulic on an electric motorcycle) had locked up.
  Angel: Pop quiz, guys. What happens when an electric bike going 60 miles per hour hits an anti-electric field going in the opposite direction?!
• Inscrutable Aliens: The UFO appears this way at first, as it shows up out of nowhere and doesn't seem to have any motives, until OJ realizes it's actually a single alien organism motivated by animal instinct.
• Irony:
  • As noted above, it turns out that Antlers himself needed to listen to the advice he gave Emerald far more than she did.
  • Immediately after Otis Sr. assures OJ that they won't have any more problems if they get hired for the shoot, the wind subtly picks up, signaling that Jean Jacket — very much an unforeseen problem — is now hovering over the house.
  • Within the same dialogue, he instructs OJ to "just execute", and if he does so they won't have to sell any more horses. A moment later, Otis himself is executed — and six months later, OJ is forced to sell more horses, who will meet a similarly grisly fate.
  • Jupe's first lines in the film (in the "Gordy's Home" footage) is "Great gift, Dad. Way to think things through." The latter sentence sets the tone for his decisions through the rest of the movie.
  • Lucky, in spite of being brought to Jupiter's Claim for Jupe to use him as bait for Jean Jacket, ends up being one of the few beings present who isn't eaten by the creature.
• Isn't It Ironic?: An in-universe example. Gordy's Home uses the song "(You're a) Strange Animal" by Lawrence Gowan as its opening theme song. The show uses the song to emphasize the silliness of apes as a suburban family adopts an ape used in experiments by NASA. However, in actuality, the music video for the song features a wild animal (played by Gowan) being taken out of its natural habitat, being experimented on, and the lyrics state that this isn't a good thing. Tellingly, the show cuts out the poignant verses of the song.
  They've been trying to stick a line in your system
  Analyzing the defenses you hold
  Trying to open wide, hoping to step inside
  Your soul
• Jump Scare: The ranch's display horse suddenly crashing through the windshield of OJ's car, regurgitated by Jean Jacket above him.
• Kid Detective: Or rather Kid Sheriff. Ricky "Jupe" Park starred in a Film Within A Film of said title when he was a kid, and heavily emphasizes the role years later to help promote the Jupiter's Claim theme park (which according to its website, uses the actual set from the film franchise for its facilities). Notably, despite what his marketing of himself would suggest, Kid Sheriff's posters suggest that Jupe wasn't actually the films' main character or the titular sheriff.
• Killer Gorilla: Ricky starred in a popular sitcom in the 1990s which featured a family living with a pet chimpanzee named Gordy. However, during the filming of a Birthday Episode, some of the balloons in the scene popped, frightening Gordy, who went on a rampage, killing two members of the cast, maiming a third, and horrifically traumatizing Ricky before being gunned down.
• Kill the Lights: The UFO's presence messes with any electronics in its vicinity, most obviously lights. However, there is nothing to suggest it has any awareness of how threatening this makes it. One of the main scientific consultants on the film suggested that Jean Jacket moves via electromagnetic propulsion, meaning that its effect on electronics might just be a byproduct of how it moves.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A subtle example: at the start of the film, Otis Sr. mentions the company bringing him and OJ "back for the sequel", and the camera holds on OJ for an especially long time.
• Living Gasbag: The true form of Jean Jacket is a massive, billowing, jellyfish-like creature whose insides resemble inflated tubes. Emerald is even able to kill it at the end by popping it like a balloon.
• Living Ship: Jean Jacket is a biological Flying Saucer in its first form.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Invoked by Holst's recitation of "The Purple People Eater", a goofy comedy song from the 1950s, which Holst does very straight and seriously in a deep bass, using it for ominousness.
• Meaningful Background Event:
  • Near the beginning of the movie, a radio can be heard talking about a group of hikers that have gone missing in the area, with authorities having no answers as to where they went. The film itself never directly follows up on this, but in retrospect it serves as an early warning sign that Ricky's "Star Lasso Experience" was already in major trouble: if the hikers were indeed eaten by Jean Jacket (which would explain the screams OJ hears coming from the sky, and the coin, key, and other objects that fall at the beginning of the movie), then that means that even before everyone in the audience stares at Jean Jacket, the alien had already acquired a taste for humans.
    • In the same scene, dust kicks up in the background, indicating that Jean Jacket is directly above the pair.
  • Later, when OJ explains to Em and Angel how eye contact sometimes enrages animals, a group of jocks in the background gets into a shoving match, ostensibly about one of them looking at the other in the wrong way, underlining the validity of OJ's point.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The horse named "Lucky" is the only horse in the film that survives encountering the alien (if the final scene is literally happening).
    • As a contrast, the horse named Ghost is the one that Otis Sr. is riding when he's hit with the debris that kills him. It's also the first horse that OJ witnesses being abducted and presumably later killed when Jean Jacket consumes it.
    • As another contrast, OJ also witnesses a horse named Clover being taken away by Jean Jacket; Clover is correlated with good luck, but isn't as lucky as Lucky.
    • Though we do not see the horse in question, because it was the first one Jupe ever witnessed Jean Jacket take, months prior to the film's events, Jupe claims that he originally had a horse named Trigger. This has a double if not triple meaning, as to "trigger" something can meant to set something off, like pulling the trigger on a gun, and Trigger's abduction set Jupe's aspirations with the Star Lasso Experience in motion, leading to his death and those of everyone there. But on another level, a "trigger" is a term used in psychology to describe a stimulus which brings back traumatic memories and causes distress, and Jupe constantly surrounds himself with triggers from his past trauma from Gordy's Home that he never properly deals with. Also, of course, Trigger was the famous palomino horse of TV and movie cowboy Roy Rogers, who, like Ricky, went on to parlay his Western movie career into various profit enterprises including a fast-food franchise.
  • In a film about the nature of spectacle, what name does Jupe give to the monstrous, territorial alien species that he believes resides inside Jean Jacket? "The Viewers".
  • Three characters are named Angel, Nessie (Angel's coworker), and Phoenix (Ricky's son). All three refer to mythological or folkloric creatures (Nessie being common shorthand for the Loch Ness Monster).
  • Jupe's wife's name is Amber. Amber is fossilized tree sap, most well known for preserving dead organisms like insects inside all the way to the present day, for their bodies to be observed by modern day humans. This is much like how Amber has an active role in trying to preserve and make use of her husband's youthful fame, which essentially means to preserve the tragedy that was a big part of why he was so famous.
• Milking the Monster: The Star Lasso Experience at Jupiter's Claim offers guests a glimpse at (and death by) a genuine Flying Saucer.
• Missing Mom: OJ and Em's mother is never mentioned, though at one point the camera lingers on a framed portrait of a woman implied to be the late Mrs. Haywood.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Jean Jacket's behaviour and features are a mashup of various sea life with some terrestrial ones thrown into the mix.
  • Its default form glides like a ray moving over low terrain, and has been noted to resemble foxes darting for cover when it moves between clouds.
  • Its true form is a mashup of jellyfish, siphonophores (especially the frills of the man o' war), cephalopods, sea anemone, and even sharks - its 'head' or top part flares out like a hammerhead shark.
  • Like jellyfish and siphonophores, Jean Jacket's true form is an etheral, drifting predator, though it is far more proactive in predation.
  • Cephalopods are capable of elaborate disguises, spewing ink (or in Jean Jacket's case, clouds) to disguise movement, and using their tendrils to manipulate the environment, as well as having fantastic eyesight and intelligence. The art book implies its 'death' may have been like a cephalopod deploying ink to escape. In addition, certain forms of squid, like Magnapinna, drift similarly to jellyfish.
  • Speaking of sharks: its aggressive patrolling of territory brings to mind wolves and coyotes - but certain kinds of sharks are very aggressive when patrolling territory to the point they'll twist their posture to look different (and most importantly look different) from their normal form, quite like JJ. Its habit of attacking and eating anything in sight is also reminscent of Oceanic Whitetips and other sharks like it, which are aggressive because the are so few calories in open waters. Or in Jean Jacket's case, open skies.
  • Furthermore on the wolf point: wolves are some of the only predators that recognise specific targets and can take revenge.
  • Like chimps and gorillas (and various other predators), Jean Jacket takes staring as a sign of aggression or challenge, and charge as part of an attack - but also do bluff charges meant to scare off potential predators or rivals. When OJ successfully scares Jean Jacket, its 'true form' and charging at OJ are nothing but bluffs.
  • Finally, some reptiles (and cephalopods, anemone, and crustaceans) can tear off limbs or eject innards to escape. The art book indicates that most of Jean Jacket was recovered, but it was missing its eye...
• Monster Delay: Mostly accomplished by Obscured Special Effects. The UFO spends a lot of time hiding in cloud cover, so you spend a lot of the early part of the movie wondering what exactly you're looking at. Even after the UFO is shown more closely, it's mostly featureless with the exception of its mouth hole up until near the end when it completely unfurls itself.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song:
  • "Fingertips, Pts. I & II" by Stevie Wonder plays over the trailer; it begins with Emerald grooving to a record of the wild 1962 live version on the stereo, up until the power goes out and the turntable stops. It then segues to a very grim, tense mix of just hand claps, bongos, and Little Stevie's voice crying out.
  • The BET Awards trailer puts its own spin on the melody from E-40's "Choices", and aptly includes the "nope/yep" backing vocals.
  • In a deliberate invocation, Antlers semi-sarcastically sings a gruff, moody rendition of "Purple People Eater" that would fit right at home in a creepy trailer, but is also very, very funny.
• Motifs:
  • The sky — even before they know what's up there (and especially after they do), characters are constantly looking up at the sky, which tends to fill the frame. There are many claustrophobic horror movies out there, but this is one of the few films to make big open spaces scary.
  • Eyes — Jean Jacket resembles a giant eye in its initial form, OJ and Emerald's father is killed from a brutal eye injury, and a woman in an old black-and-white film being worked on by Antlers Holst is shown with a hand forming a circle over her eye. Early on, OJ's horse freaks out when it sees its own eye staring back at it in a mirror, which helps OJ theorize that Jean Jacket gets agitated when it thinks it's being watched; he adds some fake eyes to his hoodie to attract its attention during the final confrontation, where its own massive, square eye is on full display. Eyes or words relating to them also frequently pop up in songs, turns of phrases, and props, like a record cover featuring large eyes appearing prominently several times in the Haywoods' farm house, or in the "I'm looking at you" gesture employed by Otis and Emerald.
  • Cameras — a large part of the movie is simply the protagonists trying to photograph whatever's going on. OJ pulls out his phone camera to try and capture it, then moves to high-tech home surveillance, and then Antlers Holst defaults to a hand-cranked film camera due to Jean Jacket's effect on electrical devices. Jean Jacket's eye-thing also resembles an Old-West-era camera.
  • Veils — the opposite of cameras and eyes, being things which hide something from view. Ricky is saved from Gordy's rampage due to hiding behind a tablecloth that prevents him from making eye contact, Mary Jo Elliot wears a veil to hide her disfigured face, Holst dramatically removes the rain cover from his hand-cranked camera before making his "impossible shot", and the UFO's digestive tract is made of a billowing, cloth-like material, as is the form it takes in the climax.
  • Obviously, cowboy iconography is all over this film, but less noticeable is that Jean Jacket in its "saucer" configuration is not perfectly circular and has a subtle fabric-like texture, resembling the underside of a cowboy hat — specifically, Ricky's hat.
  • The TMZ reporter who trespasses on the Haywoods' land near the climax firmly hammers in all of these motifs by expressing them in one singular character design. His helmet fully reflects the sky; the visor with the dot in the middle resembles an eye with a pupil; he holds multiple cameras; his face is completely hidden; and he is an arrogant motorcyclist, a "cowboy" in a more modern and negative sense.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • Michael Wincott reciting the lyrics to "Purple People Eater" in a gruff, ominous tone of voice. It's even included in the soundtrack.
  • The day is saved by the Kid Sheriff mascot balloon from Jupiter's Claim, used as a compressed-air bomb.
• Naïve Animal Lover: After escaping Gordy's rampage as a kid, a shell-shocked Ricky attempts to accept the blood-soaked chimp's offer of another fistbump before the animal is shot down. Some of this apparent faith in a human ability to tame animals extends into his adulthood, as he tries to turn a UFO, which turns out to be a far more dangerous animal than any chimp, into a live show for his profit. While it's not a completely straight example, as Ricky is under the impression that it's not an animal, OJ (and the audience) realise he's basically playing chicken with a wild animal by feeding a dangerous predator that can be set off into killing over its territory. He also seems to believe that because Gordy spared him, he's got real-life Plot Armor; before he starts his speech at the Star Lasso Experience, he can be heard whispering to himself, "You're chosen."
• Nature Is Not Nice: A major theme of the movie is how not treating animals with respect is a sign of carelessness and will eventually backfire. This theme is what connects the Gordy incident with the eventual truth of Jean Jacket's nature.
  • This is what sets Gordy off. Chimps are notoriously aggressive and treat direct eye contact as a challenge; it doesn't matter how trained or socialized they are, unless they think you're the alpha or their mother. No one acknowledges that, figuring he's trained and thus safe. He's brought out during a taping, and the heat from the spotlights starts popping the balloons on set while the cameras, crew, and his co-stars are staring directly at him, some smiling, which only exacerbates the issue, as bared teeth are also a sign of aggression for chimps. "Six minutes and thirteen seconds of havoc" ensue.
  • Jean Jacket is in actuality a territorial, predatory animal, and as such hates being looked at (for similar reasons as Gordy) enough to attack and kill anything and anyone that looks up at it.
• Never My Fault: The film crew at the beginning fire the Haywood siblings when Lucky kicks a stage light, while completely ignoring the fact that this happened because they disrespected Lucky's boundaries despite OJ's warnings and startled the horse with his own reflection.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The first trailer features plenty of imagery that either didn't make the cut to the final film (notably, the shot of the crab on the miniature furniture is not in the actual movie, nor is anything like it), or was added to keep The Reveal less obvious. It also plays up the Surreal Horror aspect by showing many scenes out of context while explaining nothing about the plot. While the film has many offbeat moments, the plot itself is pretty straightforward.
  • It has been argued the later trailers intentionally invoked this, as all trailers from the CinemaCon trailer onwards prominently show off the UFO. This caused many to claim that they were giving away too much...only for the actual film to reveal that going in thinking this is a regular alien spaceship puts the audience exactly in the protagonists' shoes and is essential to the plot. Ironically, those same trailers downplayed the horror elements, which made it seem as if the film was actually an action-adjacent thriller instead of the horror-thriller that it actually is.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: In-Universe, the difficulty of working with animals in the entertainment business — especially if you mistreat or disrespect them — is a running theme. Ricky's backstory involves the cast of his former sitcom getting mauled by their chimpanzee co-star, the Haywood ranch loses a client when the horse they provide reacts violently to a lack of respect from the film crew, and Ricky's attempt to work Jean Jacket — itself nothing more than a predatory animal — into a live show backfires horribly.
  • On a meta level, this is something the filmmakers were clearly mindful of. Gordy is portrayed with motion capture by actor Terry Notary (who also played Kong in the MonsterVerse movies and Rocket in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its sequels) rather than a real chimp, because, as the movie establishes, having a real chimpanzee on a film set can be very dangerous.
• New Old West: The protagonists run a ranch where they train horses for movies, Ricky runs a Wild West-themed amusement park, and the third act outright uses a Western-style score in several scenes. In this case, it's combined with Sci-Fi Horror, Weird West, and the Sinister Southwest, with the main villain being not a gang of human outlaws or a business baron but a UFO, an iconic fixture of modern folklore in the western US.
• Newscaster Cameo: Real-life LA-area newscaster Hetty Chang cameos as a journalist reporting on the aftermath of the Star Lasso Experience.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The film was released in late July 2022, and based on the date on Jupe's flyer, the majority of the film takes place in September of 2022. The only moments that don't take place in September of 2022 are Otis Sr.'s death, which takes place approximately six months before the movie proper (around March) and the Gordy's Home scenes, which are flashbacks that take place in 1998.
• Nightmare Fetishist: When we see Holst in his private editing bay, he is reviewing stock footage of predators killing and eating their prey. Considering his ultimate fate, it is strongly implied that his idea of what constitutes "the Impossible Shot" is what a prey animal sees right before it is eaten. Perhaps his intentions were for his hand-crank camera to be recovered after his death, thereby immortalizing him as the cinematographer who got "the Impossible Shot."
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Many people react to Jean Jacket by declaring "Nope!" and running away. OJ has this reaction when he tries to get a clear look at it when it is above his truck; realizing its sheer size, he decides to hunker down in the truck for as long as it takes.
• Nominal Hero: The Haywoods are far from being bad people, but their primary motivation for the entire movie is to get footage of the UFO to get rich and famous. Even after 40 people get eaten by the alien, their main decision that they ponder is to whether to continue trying to get the footage or get the hell out of Dodge. Emerald attempting to actually kill the alien seems more of an off-the-cuff decision after it's possibly killed her brother (and she continues trying to get a photo of it even then). At that point, getting proof of it becomes as much an act of revenge as trying to kill it. To be fair, the Haywoods are in financial distress due to the sudden death of Otis Sr., and their bid for fame and fortune is as much to provide financial security as it is for glory.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Jean Jacket is a predator motivated purely by hunger and territorial behaviour rather than an intentionally evil force.
• No One Could Survive That!: When Angel watches the TMZ reporter fly off his motorcycle at sixty miles an hour, he says there's no way he's survived, right before the reporter starts screaming in pain.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • As tension-filled as the scene of Gordy's rampage is, the grisliest details of his attack are not explicitly shown. At most, we see him beating his TV father to death and brutally disfiguring Mary Jo Elliott, but the former is obscured by a swinging door, and the latter by a couch. With the glimpse of what remains of Mary Jo's face that we see decades later, what she or any of Gordy's victims could've looked like immediately afterwards is left to our imagination.
  • In a sense, what happens to the living things that Jean Jacket swallows. The most that can be seen of the process is a woman weeping and screaming in terror while trapped in the alien's digestive tract, but judging by the screaming resonating from it even hours later, it must be pure torment. Though, in this case, it's suggested to specifically be a result of the creature's indigestion as a result of a plastic horse. When the UFO later swallows the reporter, it only takes a measly 30 seconds for JJ to crush him to death.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Multiple characters separately have one when they realize that one of the clouds isn't moving.
  • Tom Bogan (Ricky's TV dad) has a couple of these moments in quick succession on the set of Gordy's Home. The first is when he realizes that shouting at Gordy as though he's trying to discipline a child or pet dog only further provokes him. The second is when he learns too late that a middle-aged man absolutely cannot outrun an enraged chimpanzee.
• Older Is Better: Zig-zagged. The UFO shuts down all electronics in its presence, so using horses and analog, mechanical devices is generally better when dealing with it than modern, digital equipment. However, a mechanical camera has all the usual drawbacks that make it inconvenient, and a horse is not fast enough to outrun the UFO, but a motorcycle when given a head start outside of the EMP field is, which Emerald uses to lure the alien elsewhere.
• Ominous Fog: A thick fog rolls in around the Haywood ranch after the UFO vomits all over their home. Partially justified, as it had been raining the scene before.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • The film begins with a blood-soaked, clothed chimpanzee wandering around a film set with a sitcom voiceover playing. It isn't until later in the film that it's explained what was happening, and even later that the scene is shown again, now showing what happened immediately before and after it.
  • The opening credits play over the camera as it travels through a long, semi-translucent tunnel, focusing in on a dark square. It's later made clear that the tunnel is in fact the alien's internal digestive tract, and the square is Jean Jacket's eye.
• One-Winged Angel: Jean Jacket takes the form of a mostly featureless, grey, Flying Saucer for most of the film, until the end when it unfurls itself into a massive billowing beast resembling a deep sea jellyfish made out of bedsheets.
• One-Word Title: The title is Nope, of course, based on a refrain oft repeated by the characters. Then there are the chapter titles, all named after the film's various animals. Only the last one, "Jean Jacket," is an exception to the one word limit.
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: The eventual appearance of Jean Jacket could be based on the "giant sky clams", an obscure cryptid reportedly seen in the American southwest. It's usually associated more with Nevada than California, but let's not split hairs.
• Pastiche: Of Steven Spielberg's older summer blockbusters:
  • Jurassic Park shares the theme of a very dangerous, intimidating, "natural" animal (dinosaurs versus aliens) being used for entertainment (similar to Jupe's use of the UFO for his show), which spirals out of control and causes multiple deaths.
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind is about an obsession with UFOs, which hide behind the clouds, and are tracked throughout rural, wide-sky locations.
  • Jaws, with three men (OJ, Holst, and Angel — including Em in Nope) that seek to strike down the natural threat of the predatory animal. The creature is also taken out by compressed air.
  • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is parodied in Jupe's perspective of the Gordy incident, showing a little boy bonding with a creature. However, rather than being able to bond with the alien in an apparently similar way, he, his family, his employees, and his audience are murdered.
• Opportunistic Vendors: After the arrival of the UFO, Jupe capitalizes off of the anomaly, creating and selling costumes and toys based on what he thinks the aliens look like, as part of his "Star Lasso Experience", sacrificing horses and profiting off of the extraterrestrial. Needless to say, things don't go exactly according to plan.
• Please Wake Up: After Gordy has calmed down from killing Tom, brutally beating Mary Jo, and mutilating Phyllis' hand, he reaches out with hesitation to nudge Mary Jo's foot, uncertain of whether or not she's still alive.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Otis Sr.'s death at the start of the film causes the rest of the Haywoods' plot, and arguably Ricky's B-plot as well. While Jean Jacket was clearly already eating humans at this point, if Otis Sr. had been alive, the ranch probably wouldn't have been in such trouble, as he would have still had some clout to get clients, OJ wouldn't have needed to sell their horses to Ricky (thus enabling him to keep Jean Jacket in the area, to the point it claimed it as its territory), the siblings wouldn't have been so desperate to profit off Jean Jacket with the "money shot", and thus they wouldn't have unwittingly tricked Jean Jacket into eating the horse statue, indirectly partially leading it to devour Ricky and his audience.
• Product Placement: Several examples:
  • Angel works for Fry's Electronics, a prominent big box electronics chain that unfortunately went under before the film released. Invoked, as the choice was clearly made to have the visual of Fry's Burbank store with its iconic flying-saucer exterior included in the movie.
  • Jupiter's Claim is shown to sell ICEE-brand slushies, even having them in the arena for the Star Lasso Experience. This may also have been an intentional choice, to foreshadow the ultimate fate of the Star Lasso Experience attendees.
  • Holst's hand-cranked camera is shown to use IMAX film. Significant parts of the film were filmed on IMAX cameras.
• Race Against the Clock: After everyone at the Jupiter's Claim park is eaten by Jean Jacket, the protagonists realize they only have a day or two before a whole lot more people show up to investigate, something that'd not only ruin their chances of getting photographic proof of aliens for themselves, but also get all those people eaten by Jean Jacket as well. Thus, they need to get photographic proof of it and kill it, all before that happens.
• Race Lift: In-Universe. Jupe, an Asian man, describes a Saturday Night Live sketch about Gordy's rampage, in which Jupe himself was played by Scott Wolf (a white actor).
• Rain of Something Unusual: Jean Jacket spits out non-organic items that it can't digest; the characters experience this through the sight of household objects like keys inexplicably raining from the sky. The movie starts with one such scene that results in a coin falling directly into Otis Sr.'s eye, killing him. Later, Jean Jacket unloads a Rain of Blood over the Haywood house, along with a bunch of the props from Jupiter's Claim, after its latest meal.
• The Reveal: The UFO isn't a Flying Saucer vehicle housing aliens — it's the alien itself.
• Rewatch Bonus: You can spot the cloud where Jean Jacket is hiding in several scenes (notably, the scene where Em and OJ return from Jupiter's Claim after OJ rejects Jupe's offer to buy the ranch) before it's revealed what it actually is.
• Riddle for the Ages: Jean Jacket isn't a UFO, but is in fact a giant living creature. That is literally all we learn about it. Where does it come from? Are there more of its kind out there? If it's from another planet, but not a sapient creature, how did it even get to Earth? Hell, is it even an alien?
• Rule of Symbolism: The scene of the aftermath of Gordy's rampage has Jupe actually seeing a shoe standing straight up unsupported by any other force — or at least, he does so in his recollection of the event. He survives the tragic encounter with Gordy in a situation where one could say the odds were rather against him. Online theories argue that the shoe symbolizes Jupe's subconscious belief that he can do the impossible, or at least overcome very difficult odds. That belief carries through tragically to make him think he can tame and control Jean Jacket, proving he absolutely learned the wrong lesson from surviving his encounter with Gordy.
• Satire: The film as a whole is basically lampooning animal exploitation and fame-seeking; almost all the main and supporting characters seek either glory, fame, or fortune through Jean Jacket.
  • OJ and Emerald want to be the first to expose the alien in anticipation of a small fortune from the publicity.
  • Jupe overconfidently believes that he can exploit the alien, believing it to be a UFO, to perform acts on his theme park; this ultimately proves fatal for him.
  • Holst has an obsession with "the impossible shot", and aims to achieve that through taking one such shot of the alien; this obsession also ends up claiming his life.
  • Finally, to re-emphasize the movie's theme, the TMZ paparazzi shows up as well.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: OJ is shown to be more serious, grounded, and a man of few words, while his sister Emerald is more expressive, outgoing, fun-loving, and talks a little too much.
• Scenery Porn: We get plenty of wide, gorgeous shots of the Agua Dulce desert where the Haywoods' ranch and the Parks' theme park are located. Peele shot parts of the movie in IMAX to capture the openness of the space.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Peele has stated that the film's title is an acknowledgement of the reaction that rational people in horror movie situations would have of immediately leaving. There are several examples of characters in the film doing so, but perhaps the most overt example is when OJ, after trying to film what he thinks is an alien (it's actually one of Jupe's children in costume) and seeing another alien reveal itself, instantly books it, repeating "Nope" to himself all the while.
• Shout-Out:
  • A few to Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion, one of the first films ever, which the film (or perhaps just the Haywoods In-Universe) erroneously claims is the first film ever.
    • Both Otis Sr. and Emerald, in different scenes, claim that the horse rider from the film is a family ancestor.
    • A double one in the TMZ reporter's name, Ryder Muybridge.
  • Towards the end, Emerald performs the bike stop from AKIRA after riding the TMZ reporter's motorcycle to Jupiter's Claim. While Peele actually has a public history with the manga, having turned down the chance to direct a live-action adaptation, this is likely first and foremost a nerd-out moment for him; when it was brought up in an interview with IGN, his response was to giggle with joy.
    • Another possible reference to AKIRA is the shot of people slowly getting digested in Jean Jacket's insides, with its visual similarities to the scene of Kaneda and Kaori trapped inside Tetsuo's mutating, expanding body.
  • The "being digested by an alien" aspect is also reminiscent of Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005).
  • Word of God states that some of the Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion served as inspiration for Jean Jacket's gigantic jellyfish-like true form, which is obvious in the white colouring and shark-like features that resemble MP-EVA. Another reference is snuck in with OJ and Em bonding over Kirin beer: the same brand Misato prefers.
  • Four names in the "PO Box" section of the "Jupiter's Claim" website are RodW23, ChWashington, 12Armitage34, and RoseAllDay, referring to characters from Get Out.
  • There are several references to Us:
    • Jupe has a large pair of gold scissors on his desk, a reference to the scissors that the Tethered wield.
    • The protagonists later stop by a seafood fast-food restaurant also seen in Us.
    • The fleet number seen on the back of Angel's work truck includes the number 1111, an Arc Number from Us.
  • The idea that flying saucers are living organisms that suck up and devour people and animals, and that this could explain some disappearances as well as anecdotal reports of rainfalls of blood, such as the Kentucky Meat Shower mentioned below, was first popularized by paranormal writer Charles Fort in his 1919 book, "The Book of the Damned," and was a popular concept in 1950s flying saucer pulp literature.
  • Ricky believing that he figured out the aliens' intent by noting they only seem to be targeting specific areas likely references The Day After Roswell, whose author believes that the aliens are hostile because they only ever seemed to scout out military bases. Just like the author of that book, however, they're both wrong for simple reasons: in Corso's case, it's spy jets, and in Ricky's case, it's an animal who has found a convenient source of food.
  • The UFO being a jellyfish-like biological entity that can transform into a flying saucer hearkens back to the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • The claustrophobic innards of Jean Jacket hearken back to another UFO film with a Living Ship or otherwise biomechanical UFO with plenty of Body Horror, Fire in the Sky.
  • The experience of being digested by Jean Jacket is implied to be a long, drawn-out, agonizing Fate Worse than Death, similar to being digested by the Sarlacc. Although most likely unintentional, the alien's innards even have a fleshy, claustrophobic appearance much like the inside of the Sarlacc does in The Book of Boba Fett when Boba is shown escaping from its stomach.
  • OJ mentions to his sister that the reason their father went back on his promise to teach her to train a horse on her birthday was because he was training horses for The Scorpion King. Otis wears a crew hoodie for The Scorpion King at the climax.
  • The poster for Ricky's movie Kid Sheriff looks exactly like the poster for Holes.
  • When Jean Jacket makes its presence known in the climax, Angel says, "It's heeeeeeere."
  • At the Star Lasso Experience, Jupe wears a flashy cowboy outfit that features a flying saucer on the back, similar to one worn by Art Land (Jack Nicholson) in Mars Attacks!.
  • The scene in the shed features shoutouts to several famous alien movies, including The Mcpherson Tape (how the aliens are dressed and the fact that they're played by children). The shot where they peer at OJ from behind a wall is also reminiscent to a similar shot in Communion.
  • The Haywood ranch and Jupe's Claim are located in Agua Dulce, California. While a reasonable setting for the story, it also calls to mind Dulce, New Mexico, where a conspiracy theory alleges there's a secret base run by the US government and aliens. Residents of Dulce, NM also frequently report UFO/UAP sightings and other paranormal events, so Jean Jacket would fit right in.
• Show Within a Show: Gordy's Home, the sitcom about the titular chimp that lives with an astronaut mom and her suburban family, is the center point of Ricky's backstory. It acts as thematic foreshadowing for The Reveal of the UFO's true nature, as just like how Gordy was a chimp that was believed to be tamed but reverted to his primal instincts in response to a perceived threat and killed one of his co-stars, the UFO is actually a wild animal that acts out of hunger and standing up for its dignity, and is a mortal danger to anyone who tries to control or challenge it.
• Shown Their Work:
  • One of the more horrifying aspects of real-life chimpanzee attacks is the instinctual targeting of the face and hands, as Mary-Jo Elliot sadly discovered.
  • Peele used extensive research on actual deep sea creatures such as cuttlefish and jellyfish for designing Jean Jacket, to the point that one of the consultants on the film was able to write an In-Universe scientific paper on its anatomy.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: OJ and Emerald both have opposing traits from each other. OJ has a natural affinity for horses and dedication to running the ranch but is not at all a people person, while Em has charisma and business-savvy but is less interested in the family business.
• Sickening "Crunch!":
  • Jean Jacket's victims after the Star Lasso incident are all screaming for hours, pleading for help, before they all are very suddenly silenced with a squelching noise as the alien's insides flex.
  • Gordy's offscreen mauling of Mary-Jo's face is signalled by wet, crunchy tearing noises.
• Sinister Southwest: The film is about a UFO haunting a California gulch near Agua Dulce, with a Wild-West theme park as a prominent locale for much of the story.
• Skewed Priorities: The motorcyclist is more concerned with getting footage of whatever might be happening than the fact he's just been in a high-speed motorcycle accident and is in obvious pain.
• Souvenir Land: Jupiter's Claim seems to heavily merchandise both the UFO and Jupe's days in Kid Sheriff, complete with a giant mascot balloon floating over the park.
• Special Effects Failure: A recurring theme In-Universe. Popping balloons scare Gordy the chimp into a violent fight-or-flight panic, Lucky is replaced by the commercial crew with a cheap-looking fake horse form covered in green-screen material, and the air dancers used to draw Jean Jacket's attention during the climax malfunction at a moment that nearly gets OJ eaten.
• Spit Out a Shoe: This is actually what kills OJ and Emerald's father. The alien occasionally regurgitates inedible objects that it eats accidentally, and he happens to be underneath the creature as it's doing so. This also occurs much later in the film when it starts throwing up all the garbage it's eaten from before, including Ricky's alien merchandise and the horse statue it had mistakenly swallowed earlier.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • The UFO hides itself within a cloud, but Angel is able to find it by playing the security camera footage on fast-forward, noticing that it's the only cloud in the sky that doesn't move or change shape at all.
  • For a major portion of the film, Jean Jacket's location in the clouds can be spotted via the rainbow pennant hanging off of it, until it eventually regurgitates the horse statue it was attached to.
• Starfish Aliens: Initially appearing as the modern archetypal example of a Flying Saucer, Jean Jacket is revealed to be a carnivorous alien animal that unfurls into a bizarre, jellyfish-like form with a giant square eye that telescopes out like a nineteenth-century camera. However, while its appearance may be alien, its actual mentality is recognizably animalistic. The realization that Jean Jacket is just an animal leads to OJ using his skills as a horse trainer to use the alien's instincts against itself.
• The Stinger: After the credits, there is a still-image advertisement for the real-life Jupiter's Claim theme park at Universal Studios.
• Studio Audience: Gordy's rampage takes place in front of a live audience, many of whom can be seen hiding behind their seats.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Many animals do not like being looked at directly, as they interpret it as a challenge. No matter how Gordy might be used to being around humans, the chimp goes berserk after being stared at by everyone around him and getting startled by popping balloons. The same goes for Jean Jacket, since it's an alien animal.
  • An entire theme park's worth of people disappearing in an instant draws media attention very quickly, and the Haywoods don't escape notice, as seen during the climax.
    • The movie also averts The Greatest Story Never Told; reporters tend to be stationed near crime scenes, or as close as they can be. Right after Jean Jacket is seemingly killed with only Emerald to witness it, reporters swarm Jupiter's Claim, and their dialogue makes it clear that they saw everything as well.
  • When suddenly confronted face to face with an "alien", OJ just punches it in the face.
• Surreal Horror:
  • Early marketing for the movie framed its visuals as this. The very first poster for the movie was nothing but an ominous black cloud in the night sky with a kite string dangling from it. Likewise, the first official trailer is full of surreal but unsettling imagery, including a crab walking through a diorama of a house; a child raising a hand to fist bump an inhuman hand dripping with blood; a horrifically scarred woman hiding her face under a veil and staring at the sky; characters getting yanked into the air by unseen forces; and of course, that same black cloud. Within the movie itself, most of this imagery is actually pretty literal and sensible, although the crab isn't in the movie anywhere.
  • The exact nature of the "cloud" takes a while to unfold, and even the explanation that it’s a giant, flying, alien predator doesn't explain where it comes from, how it's arrived in the gulch, or exactly how it functions.
• Survival Mantra: "Don't look! Don't look! Don't look!" Justified, as Jean Jacket becomes agitated when it's looked at.
• Swallowed Whole: Jean Jacket sucks up its prey whole and alive through a hole-like orifice and does not appear to have any teeth with which to rip apart food. It's implied the prey is alive inside its digestive tract for a very long time, until they enter some sort of crushing organ that mulches them up. This ends up working against Jean Jacket at the end when it attempts to envelop a giant helium balloon, then tries to crush the balloon within itself, but now the pressurized gas has nowhere to go but through it...
• Take That!:
  • The TMZ photographer who shows up late in the film is a total idiot who is completely out of his element, with Emerald and OJ being totally exasperated when they realize where he's from and what he's doing. He isn't even given the dignity of having his face seen, wearing an entirely mirrored motorcycle helmet from his first appearance up until when he gets eaten by Jean Jacket. His only contribution is leaving his motorcycle behind for Emerald to use during the climax of the story. This ties neatly into the film's stance against mindless spectacle.
  • The film also critiques celebrities who try to capitalize on personal infamy for fame. Despite witnessing two of his co-stars killed and a third completely disfigured as a child, Ricky tries to cash-grab on this later in life through his theme park, an informal tour for inquiring minds about his time on Gordy's Home, and a reality show that incorporates his family. This fame-chasing hubris regarding Jean Jacket winds up getting the entire family and their paying audience killed.
  • The only way Ricky can explain the Gordy's Home incident to OJ and Emerald is by describing the Saturday Night Live skit that parodied the incident, wherein Chris Kattan played Gordy, and his exhibit of the show also has a MAD Magazine cover spoofing what happened as well. This calls out how satirical platforms frequently try to make comedy out of real tragedies where real people were hurt or even killed.
    • Antlers Holst briefly mentions the tiger mauling that happened to Siegfried & Roy; SNL really did parody this incident shortly after it happened, with guest host Alec Baldwin as the victim, Roy Horn.
    • Ricky, who is Asian, also mentions that he himself is played in the sketch by guest host Scott Wolf (who is white) — something else true to life, as SNL has had a long track record of blackface, brownface, and especially yellowface, often facing criticism for being insensitive to the races of the people that they're portraying. ^note Jordan Peele himself is a former MADtv cast member and was slated to play Barack Obama on SNL before contract disputes with Fox prevented him from doing so. Obama was eventually portrayed that season by Fred Armisen (who is of German, Asian, and Venezuelan descent, but crucially is not Black), which offended Peele so much that he later felt he dodged a bullet.
  • The references to The Scorpion King are a Take That! as much as a Shout-Out; OJ refers to the shoot and the movie as bad, and on top of that, the character originated as a deeply poor-quality CGI monster in The Mummy Returns.
• Technology Marches On: In-Universe; immediately after the Haywoods are fired from the commercial, the crew brings in a green screen shaped like a horse, making it apparent their profession is becoming obsolete.
• That's No Moon: After spending a lot of time with characters thinking that there's a ship housing aliens in the huge, non-moving cloud, it turns out the "ship" is the alien.
• There Are No Therapists: Apparently, nobody bothered to give Ricky (who was a child at the time) any kind of professional help after he witnessed Gordy's rampage. This is, unfortunately, Truth in Television with child actors. This leaves him with severe trauma that lasts well into adulthood. This trauma, along with Ricky not learning how dangerous working with wild animals is due to having survived Gordy's massacre intact, results in the deaths of him, his family, his employees, his old costar who was maimed in that very rampage, and an audience full of innocent people.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Ricky has one of these when he remembers Gordy's rampage in full.
• Tick Tock Tune: An interesting variant in the Super Bowl trailer: the "ticking" in this case is the galloping of the horses on the ranch.
• Title Drop: "Nope" is said several times throughout the film in varying contexts.
  • The first time "nope" is heard during the film, over its opening logos, is from Phyllis Mayberry (Ricky's TV mom on Gordy's Home), directly before the Gordy incident. As this depiction of the events beforehand is audio-only, we then see it again later on with additional video footage.
  • Emerald says the word as part of her opening speech when making the point that no one remembers the name of the horse-riding jockey captured by Eadweard Muybridge.
  • When OJ asks Emerald if there's a word to describe a bad miracle, she responds, "Nope."
  • OJ says it several times while quickly leaving the scene of what he thinks is two aliens in his ranch.
  • Emerald says it on her and OJ's first night of monitoring the UFO, as she's trying to convince him to join her in leaving and saving themselves.
  • OJ says it after opening the door to his car and seeing Jean Jacket looming directly above him.
• Too Dumb to Live: If Ricky's story of his first encounter with "The Viewers" is true, he's admitting that his response to seeing a possible extraterrestrial vehicle was to keep the information secret and begin plying the "aliens" with horses, apparently uninterested in what might be happening to said horses. Rather than reporting the UFO to the government or even trying to figure out its nature (like the Haywoods do), his first instinct is to make it a spectacle centered on himself.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Despite its unique physiology, Jean Jacket is just an animal, and it needs to expel anything non-organic that it can't digest, whether it be the small bits of metal that kill Otis Sr., a plastic horse, or the blood and guts from a particularly large meal of humans. Angel survives his encounter with Jean Jacket during the climax by wrapping himself in barbed wire. Although painful for Angel, it proves just as much so for Jean Jacket, who then immediately spits him back out.
• To Serve Man: Jean Jacket acquires an exclusive taste for human after getting ruined on horses by being tricked into trying to eat a fake one. If you pay attention, though, you'll realize that it's been eating humans for at least six months, as a radio news report mentions a group of missing hikers just before loose change and keys start raining from the sky...
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • In the final trailer, Jean Jacket is shown in all its UFO-like glory chasing OJ on a horse. Zig-zagged in that the trailer doesn't reveal Jean Jacket to be an animal rather than a ship, or its ability to unfold itself and turn into a space-jellyfish.
  • A trailer released a few weeks after the film opened was targeted for people who had already seen the film, as it gave away the two main twists — that Jean Jacket is alive, and that it transforms.
• Undignified Death: The TMZ reporter is flung like a ragdoll from his bike, breaks a few bones, and gets sucked up by Jean Jacket, screaming all the while, after refusing help from OJ because he wants footage of the alien.
• The Unreveal:
  • Where did Jean Jacket come from? How did Ricky find it and figure out how to "feed" it? Why do electronics go out when it passes overhead? How does it generate a non-moving cloud around itself? We never find out, but this all serves to make it seem more alien and otherworldly.
  • The TMZ reporter says that the valley around the Haywood Ranch doesn't show up clearly on Google Maps. It isn't made explicit why this is, though it's possible it's an extension of Jean Jacket's ability to disrupt electronic devices.
  • When Gordy is attacking Mary Jo Elliott, one of her shoes is standing straight up on its heel, as if supported by an unseen force. It's left up to the audience as to why this is and whether this is literal or just how Jupe remembers the event, based on how he has the shoe displayed in the present.
• Unrobotic Reveal: The characters initially think the flying saucer is actually some sort of technologically advanced alien spaceship, but OJ eventually realizes that the saucer is the alien.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Ricky causes the deaths of himself, his family, his employees, and his entire paying audience by attempting to use the alien's predatory visits for his Star Lasso show. If OJ's speculation that Ricky's been attracting Jean Jacket to the area by feeding it is true, then that means he's also partially responsible for the deaths of Otis Haywood Sr. and several hikers.
  • The Heywood's plot to bait the UFO by way of a fake horse only sours Jean Jacket on horse flesh, agitates it by having the fake horse get lodged in its throat, and makes it go after humans exclusively. Combined with the aforementioned event of Ricky inadvertently getting the entire audience to more-or-less challenge it for dominance, it creates a perfect storm that results in everyone at Star Lasso dying.
• Vacuum Mouth: The UFO's apparent Tractor Beam is actually some kind of sucking mouth orifice which it uses to capture its prey. Angel is able to prevent being sucked up by tying himself down to a barbed wire fence. However, at the end we see it can also capture prey using numerous eversible tendrils located around its "eye".
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The incident with Gordy seems to be heavily inspired by Travis, who was a similarly trained, so-called "tamed" chimp who went into a rage one day with devastating consequences. Mary Jo Elliott shares similar injuries from Gordy's attack (a mutilated hand and face) with Charla Nash, the woman who was mauled by Travis.
• Visual Pun: During the Gordy tragedy, young Ricky is hiding under a table hoping not to get mauled by the chimp. He keeps his focus by staring on one of his costars' shoes, which is standing upright by pure chance — he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.
• We Hardly Knew Ye:
  • The mysterious motorcyclist seen in the trailer is simply a gossip reporter from TMZ, who is eaten by Jean Jacket soon after he appears.
  • Otis Sr., played by Keith David, is seen in the opening for all of five minutes before he is killed off.
• Wham Line: One from OJ after he gets a close look at the UFO and calls Emerald to warn her now that his suspicions have been confirmed. This line completely changes the entire genre of the film from a tense Sci-Fi Horror film about Inscrutable Aliens to a tense Sci-Fi Horror monster movie.
  OJ: I was right, Em. It's not a ship.
  Emerald: What happened?
  OJ: It ate them, Em. It ate them all. It's alive, Em. It's an animal, it's territorial, and it thinks this is its hom--
  (phone cuts out as power goes out)
• Wham Shot:
  • When Jupe turns around during the Star Lasso Experience and you see that Jean Jacket is on the back of his jacket, confirming that he has a connection to the UFO.
  • After Jupe and his family are sucked into Jean Jacket along with the Star Lasso Experience audience, we don't see the interior of a UFO on the inside, but a massive digestive tract.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Phyllis Mayberry never appears in the scenes that show Gordy's rampage; while we see Mary Jo on the ground being beaten and getting her face torn off, and Tom is beaten to death, Mayberry's fate is unknown. However, in September 2022, an Instagram post was made by Jennifer Lafleur, Mayberry's actress, to promote the Blu-Ray release of the movie, revealing that Mayberry's assistant had dragged her out of the studio right when Gordy's rampage started, although she ended up losing part of her right hand.
• White Is Pure: Jupe wore a white shirt on the set of Gordy's Home on the day of the incident, and it became stained with blood after Gordy was shot dead in front of him. In his adulthood, he wears a red and white suit as he tries to tame Jean Jacket, an extraterrestrial predator, in an attempt to make a profit. Unfortunately, he realizes too late how dangerous Jean Jacket really is as he, and everyone else at the Star Lasso Experience, is abducted and consumed by the creature. The red and white suit is a metaphor for how he failed to learn from his experience on Gordy's Home and how he has gotten more blood on his hands because he couldn't properly process his trauma.

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"Alright, cowboys and cowgirls, it’s time to ride off into the sunset. That’s right: happy trails, it’s closing time. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Come back again, and until then, we wish you well. Hasta la vista; adios!"

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