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Did you catch this Happy Days easter egg in one of the biggest horror franchises?
It was a reference 26 years in the making!
Scream as a whole is a horror movie franchise about... horror movie franchises. The first movie famously gave us a monologue from a major movie buff where he laid out the rules on how to survive a horror movie, including "don't drink" and "don't leave and say you'll be right back". Because you will not be right back.
The second movie deals with horror movie sequel tropes, and the third one deals with trilogies. As the franchise continued, it tackled reboots and requels. Is it really surprising, then, that something so meta would give a little wink and nod to a career-making role from one of their stars?
The original movie, released in 1996, saw Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a high school student, getting stalked by a masked killer as everyone around her gets picked off one by one. Henry Winkler plays Principal Himbry, who suspends classes when the body count grows, only to be stalked and killed in his own office.
Scream 2 introduces the Stab franchise, an in-universe movie franchise based on the events of the first movie. The Stab movies are a recurring theme throughout the rest of the franchise, with Scream 3 being set in Hollywood during the filming of Stab 3.
This leads to an opening sequence in 2022's Scream (the fifth installment) where Jenna Ortega is being called by Ghostface, who in his usual fashion, threatens to kill her friend if she doesn't answer trivia questions about the Stab franchise correctly. At one point, she desperately scrolls through IMDb of the first Stab movie on her phone, and in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, we can see that Principal Himbry was played by none other than Ron Howard.
Of course, classic TV fans will recognize the nod to Howard and Winkler's shared history — they both starred in Happy Days and formed a close friendship that still holds to this day. Who better to play the same character in the movie-within-a-movie?
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