Black Mirror's shared universe: all the hidden clues and Easter eggs
Grumpy monkeys, robot Rottweilers, toxic masculinity deconstructed via thinly-veiled Star Trek allegory. With season four of Black Mirror (Netflix), Charlie Brooker reminds us of his adeptness at covering many dystopian bases in one glum swoop. To really mix things up, he's even chucked in the occasional happy ending.
But as fans get stuck into the latest series of the tech-gone-wrong anthology, what's arguably most fascinating is the slow, yet unmistakable, shimmer into focus of a unified Brooker-verse. That disparate Black Mirror story lines are unfolding in loosely the same place and time has been hinted previously. Brooker has gone so far as allow that the episodes are located in a "psychologically shared universe".
This year, though, Brooker's Easter Eggs compulsions have gone into overdrive, with winks, nods and nudges towards earlier instalments popping up in every episode.
These range from blink-and-you've-missed-it – the planets in back-handed Trek homage USS Callister named after child abductors Skillane and Rannoch from season two's White Bear, for instance – to the meticulous: eg, Black Museum's stockpile of ephemera from past dispatches.
Keeping track of all the self-referential flourishes can, in itself, be a bit of a dystopian ordeal. To spare you we've stayed up all night joining the Black Mirror dots (yes, monkey needs a hug).
USS Callister
The dating app a receptionist uses early on is the same one that becomes a crucial plot point in Hang The DJ – the episode where Brooker unsettles the daylights out of us with a happy ending.
Michaela Cole (Shania) appeared in last season's Nosedive – aka the one that imagines our lives ruled by social media approval ratings – as an unhelpful airline employee. She may also be familiar from E4's Chewing Gum.
Chocolate and strawberry flavour Raiman-brand milk are favourites of Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons). In Men Against Fire, "Hunter" Raiman (Madeline Brewer) reveals that her family owns a farm.
Planets Skillane IV and Rannoch refer to the child child killers in White Bear.
Daly mentions owning the complete DVD collection of his favourite sci-fi saga, Space Fleet even though "Netflix has it these days". Product placement or Black Mirror holding a reflective surface up to itself?
Daly plugs into his virtual world using an uplink device similar to that featured in season three's San Junipero.
Arkangel
When 15 year-old Sara uses her mother's Arkangel tablet to rewind the footage filmed through her eyes, the interface is a dead ringer for the "grain" tech from season one's The Entire History of You
In the early demonstration of Arkangel's image-blocking capabilities, infant Sara is bombarded with violent footage from Men Against Fire. Is a Black Mirror character watching an episode of Black Mirror? Or is this a universe in which the events chronicled in Men Against Fire are recorded and widely disseminated?
The "Tusk" poster in teenage Sara's bedroom is a nod towards the rapper who becomes a target of the hashtag killers in series three's Hated In The Nation. Her Harlech Shadow poster references the lethal video game from Playtest, in the same season.
A Waldo lunchbox can be seen when Marie brings Sara to the playground in a buggy (referencing series two's The Waldo Moment).
Crocodile
The on-demand pornography at the hotel includes Best of Wraith Babes. This is a reference to the series which the Abi character joins on season one's Fifteen Million Merits.
Irma Thomas's ballad Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) plays in the background repeatedly throughout Crocodile. It is another hat-tip once again to Fifteen Million Merits, in which Abi performs the song on the X Factor-esque Hot Shot.
Anyone Who Knows What Love Is also features as a karaoke track in White Christmas (2014 seasonal special) and is sung by Raiman in Men Against Fire. Either Brooker really likes the tune or is haunted by it in his nightmares.
Mia (Andrea Riseborough) burns an article published by UKN Online - the channel to which we are introduced all the way back in The National Anthem (season one).
We learn that the judge from Hot Shots – the X Factor-like show from Fifteen Million Merits – was caught in a hotel room "with a rent boy".
A pizza is delivered by Fences, the same company that featured in USS Callister.
Metalhead
A San Junipero postcard can be seen when Maxine Peake's character is rifling a drawer.
The truck featured in the episode bears the letters TCKR – the company behind San Junipero, in the season three episode of the same name.
Black Museum
Rolo's arcane collection features one of the artificial bees that were a key plot element of Hated In The Nation
The exhibits also include the Arkangel tablet shattered at the end of episode two, the DNA-scanner from USS Callister and the blood- spattered bath that features in Crocodile
The hunter's ski-mask from White Bear can be seen. Intriguingly, it is part of a criminal exhibition (in White Bear the hunter is carrying out a legal sentence). Victoria Skillane's photograph is also stored in a case.
San Junipero is referenced when one character says "when they upload old people to the cloud". There's yet another Fifteen Million Merits easter egg, meanwhile, with the saga retold as a graphic novel being read by Jack in the sad monkey story.
The artist, Carlton Bloom, from the National Anthem can be seen hanging himself in Rolo's grisly trove.
The game from Playtest is in the museum
The laboratory mice in the mad surgeon story are named "Kenny" and "Hector" – the two major characters in season three's Shut Up and Dance.
The hospital where Haynes is employed is St Juniper – or, if you prefer the Spanish, San Junipero. The company he worked for is meanwhile called TCKR – the developer of San Junipero.
Haynes mentions a "Cookies" civil rights movies – cookies being the replicated human consciousness first encountered in White Christmas.
Nosedive
Michael Callow, the British prime minster who does something disgusting with a pig in The National Anthem, is "thrown out of the zoo again" according to a news headline.
The "HBO Moon Western" Sea of Tranquility is first referred to in The National Anthem.
Playtest
The White Bear logo is one of the icons that transforms into a gopher hole during the virtual reality game. It can also be seen in the briefcase containing the VR equipment.
A headline on Edge magazine reads : "Inside TCKR: Turning Nostalgia Into A Game". TCKR is the originator of San Junipero. Another magazine mentions Granular - creators of the killer bees in Hated In The Nation.
Shut Up And Dance
A tweet announces Prime Minister Michael Callow – again of The National Anthem infamy – is to divorce.
Kenny has a Waldo sticker on his laptop (The Waldo Moment).
"One Smart Cookie? Click to witness the kitchen tech of tomorrow" declares a website ad – again referring to White Christmas and the "cookie" widget that dooms Rafe Spall's character to an eternity listening to I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.
Kenny robs a National Alliance bank. In Playtest Cooper uses at National Alliance ATM.
A Tweet announces "Talent show Fifteen Million Merits launches new week"
A news website promises the latest on the Victoria Skillane trial.
Men Against Fire
Raiman (Madeline Brewer) sings Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) – Abi's song from Fifteen Million Merits.
Hated In The Nation
Michael Callow is still trending on Twitter
A newspaper headline reads: "What if phones but too much?" This refers to a critique of Black Mirror that appeared on the website The Toast – for which Brooker later expressed admiration.
"Phones but too much" also surfaces as a plot device in Playtest, with a call from Cooper's mother driving the protagonist over the edge. "Well, that really is what if phones but too much, f___ it, then we’re definitely doing it,” said Brooker later. “I think that’s funny."
Blue (Faye Marsay) left the force because of the Ian Rannoch case – the same one that put Victoria Skillane behind bars in White Bear).
"Victoria Skillane in jail cell suicide attempt" reads a headline. There are further references to Skillane in the hashtag freethewhitebearone and a twitter post reading #DeathToVictoriaSkillane.
The UKN news channel is seen at various points – the same one that features in The National Anthem, The Waldo Moment, White Christmas and Crocodile.
"Cookies are given human rights" says a headline – referencing both to White Christmas and looking forward to Black Museum.
"SaitoGemu team investigated over tourist disappearance," runs another news story– a nod to the shady computer game company in Playtest and the vanished Cooper. Harlech Shadow V, the video game from the same episode, is trending on Twitter.
"US military announces MASS project" says a headline, referring to the neural implants that feature on Men Against Fire.
White Christmas
A rolling news ticker-tape confirms that Michael Callow, unfortunate star of The National Anthem, is still Prime Minister – but that he is to divorce. The broadcast also confirms that White Bear's Victoria Skillane has had her appeal rejected.
One of the online viewers following Harry's pick-up attempt has the username Pie-Ape, a pejorative for the overweight in Fifteen Million Merits. Another is named I_Am_Waldo
Joe Potter (Rafe Spall) can be seen watching Hot Shots. He later briefly flips to a channel featuring Waldo.
Potter is held at a White Bear facility at the end of the episode – suggesting he is subject to the same cruel-and-unusual justice as Victoria Skillane.
The karaoke scene features a performance of Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) – as performed by Abi on Fifteen Million Merits.
The Waldo Moment
"Geraint Fitch cleared of wrongdoing following paparazzi scuffle" is a headline that features in both The Waldo Moment and The National Anthem.
Abi Kahn, the singer turned porn-star from Fifteen Million Merits features in a billboard advertisement – alongside rabble-rousing cartoon bear Waldo.
The UKN news channel – as debuted in the National Anthem and seen again in Hated In The Nation – features.
