Every Stephen King Reference In “Castle Rock”

Castle Rock, Hulu’s new Stephen King–inspired series, isn't based on any one King novel or story, but on the small Maine town that gives the show its title. Castle Rock is a setting the prolific author has turned to again and again throughout his career. It’s where a rabid Saint Bernard went on a rampage in Cujo, where Johnny Smith got a vision of the apocalypse in The Dead Zone, where a group of kids went to search for a corpse in The Body (adapted into the film Stand by Me), and where a mysterious man who may have been Satan himself set up shop in Needful Things.

But while Castle Rock, which premiered its first three episodes July 25, isn’t a direct adaptation, there are tons of references — both big and small — to some of King’s most famous works. Here’s a list of everything we spotted.

The opening titles begin with these pages from Needful Things, which is set in Castle Rock.

These are the first two parts of The Green Mile, originally published in six paperback volumes, each a month apart. Like Castle Rock, The Green Mile prominently features a prison — though not the same one.

The page from 'Salem's Lot probably isn’t all that important, but the chapter number certainly is. Nineteen is a mystical number in the Stephen King universe, most significantly in the Dark Tower series. You can read all about it here.

You ready for all of this? Derry, which is circled, is probably King’s most important location next to Castle Rock. Derry is the setting for It, Dreamcatcher, and Insomnia. Haven is the town where The Tommyknockers takes place, and it was the setting for the Syfy series Haven, very loosely based on The Colorado Kid. Little Tall Island is the setting for Dolores Claiborne and the miniseries Storm of the Century. Lewiston was the setting for another King miniseries, Kingdom Hospital. Chester’s Mill is where the dome came down in Under the Dome, and Bridgton got infiltrated by mist in — you guessed it — The Mist. Oh, and Bangor is obviously a real city: That’s where Stephen King lives.

The map shows a reference to a crash site in Haven — that’s central to the plot of The Tommyknockers.

The note about the “storm of the century” on Little Tall Island is, of course, a nod to the miniseries.

And the total eclipse mentioned at the bottom likely references the cosmic event featured in Dolores Claiborne and Gerald’s Game.

Speaking of Dolores, here’s a brief flash of her name.

The Shining doesn’t take place anywhere near Castle Rock — but the series does have a character named Jackie Torrance, which sounds an awful lot like The Shining’s Jack Torrance.

Blink and you’ll miss it, but this is the title Misery’s Return, which is the novel that Annie Wilkes forced Paul Sheldon to write in Misery.

Again, these are hard to spot, but that looks like “Cujo,” the name of the dog that terrorized Castle Rock.

The map of Shawshank State Prison is pretty self-explanatory: It’s a major setting in Castle Rock. The prison has been mentioned repeatedly throughout King’s career, most notably in the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which became the film The Shawshank Redemption. The other page is a crazed Jack Torrance’s repeated sentence in The Shining: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Room 217 is the most haunted room in The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. (It’s Room 237 in the movie.)

That’s a Pennywise quote from It — and the smile above sure looks like Pennywise too. Castle Rock star Bill Skarsgård played Pennywise in the 2017 movie adaptation.

“REDRUM” is naturally from The Shining. But here’s something else interesting: We see “217” again, but it’s been crossed out and replaced with “237,” the number from the movie. Lots of references to The Shining in these opening titles! What does it all mean? Maybe nothing — but we’ll see.

The premiere of Castle Rock gives us our first glimpse of the newly privatized Shawshank State Prison, which has appeared in several King novels and stories. Red, the narrator of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (and the film The Shawshank Redemption), actually lived in Castle Rock before he was sent to prison.

Shawshank has popped up in It, Dolores Claiborne, Apt Pupil, and Bag of Bones, among other works.

Henry is defending a woman named Leanne, who has been accused of killing her abusive husband, Richard Chambers. Richard “Eyeball” Chambers was a member of Ace’s gang in The Body. Because The Body takes place nearly 60 years ago, the ages line up.

If you don’t remember Richard Chambers, he was played by Bradley Gregg in Stand by Me. He’s also the older brother of Chris Chambers (River Phoenix in the movie).

Scott Glenn plays Alan Pangborn, who appears to be the only established King character on Castle Rock. Alan is retired now, but he was once sheriff in Castle Rock, and he played a major role in The Dark Half and Needful Things.

Dale Lacy (Terry O’Quinn) delivers a monologue about Castle Rock at the beginning of the second episode that references some of the major events that have happened here.

That would, of course, be Cujo.

That's a reference to Frank Dodd, the serial killer thwarted by Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone.

The boy is Ray Brower, whose corpse provides a mission for the kids in The Body.

We get another run-down of notable Castle Rock horrors later in the episode when Henry Deaver (André Holland) looks through newspaper clippings from the town’s past. “Shopkeeper Missing After Oddity Store Fire” is a reference to Needful Things, particularly — spoiler alert — the ending, in which Leland Gaunt flees after his shop burns to the ground.

This first one is hard to make out, but the “Anonymous Tip” in the headline is another reference to The Body. Gordie, Chris, Vern, and Teddy find Ray Brower’s body, but they decide to leave it be and end up anonymously phoning the police and letting them know where to find him.

The “Rabid Dog” is, again, Cujo. The article itself spoils the book, including the death of 4-year-old Tad, who survives in the movie.

The Mellow Tiger, where Henry meets Jackie (Jane Levy), was a major setting in Needful Things, where the bar’s owner Henry Beaufort and town drunk Hugh Priest murdered each other.

Henry asks Jackie about Nan’s Luncheonette, which popped up in The Dark Half and Needful Things.

Alan is forced to dig up a dead dog to prove to Ruth (Sissy Spacek), who is suffering from dementia, that the animal is definitely dead. In Pet Sematary, buried pets come back to life.

Molly Strand (Melanie Lynskey) shares a psychic bond with Henry — it’s been there since they were kids. Molly remembers that when Henry felt pain, she felt pain. This recalls the twin phenomenon between Thad Beaumont and his evil alter ego George Stark in The Dark Half, also set in Castle Rock.

Henry goes to the home of Vince Desjardins, where he may have been kept as a child. Like Eyeball Chambers, Vince was a member of Ace's gang in The Body. Vince doesn't pop up here, but Henry does meet Vince's brother, Joseph Desjardins.

Vince has been depicted onscreen before: He was played by Jason Oliver in Stand By Me — second from left in this photo of Ace and his gang.

Before he's released from Shawshank, the Kid watches a video narrated by someone named Lou Hadley. We don't know for sure if there's any relation, but Byron Hadley was the chief of guards at Shawshank in Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

You might remember him from the movie, where he was played by Clancy Brown.

Shortly thereafter, the Kid wreaks havoc when he visits a family celebrating the birthday of their son, Gordie. Gordie is the name of the narrator of The Body.

Chances are these Gordies aren't related — that's, uh, not how first names work. But it's still an odd coincidence, in a universe where most coincidences are intentional.

Jackie complains to the Kid about how boring Castle Rock is now, mentioning the time before she was born when there were "serial killers and psychopathic dogs," another reference to Frank Dodd in The Dead Zone and Cujo.

But more importantly, we get confirmation of the link between Jackie Torrance and The Shining's Jack Torrance. Turns out he is her uncle, and she took his name to spite her parents, who won't talk about Jack. Jackie — whose real name is Diane — says that Jack was a writer, and that he went crazy one winter and tried to axe murder his wife and kid at a fancy ski resort.

Here's what's weird about that: In the book, Jack uses a roque mallet (and not an axe) to attack Wendy and Danny. Did Jackie get her facts wrong, or is this the movie Jack Torrance and not the book version? Remember that in the opening credits, we saw the number 217 (the haunted room in the book) crossed out and replaced with 237 (the haunted room in the movie).

The Kid is able to hear a lot of the past darkness in Castle Rock, although it's all jumbled together. Some of what he hears is hard to place — a man and a woman screaming, for example. But some of the references are more overt. The barking dog is Cujo again, and the "wanna see a dead body?" is another reference to The Body. The Kid also hears a baby crying and then the sound of something getting hit by a car, which recalls the fate of Gage Creed in Pet Sematary. That novel takes place in Ludlow, not Castle Rock — but Ludlow is only an hour drive away.

Molly has the ability to hear thoughts, a power known in the Stephen King universe as shining.

Danny Torrance has the shining — that's what gives The Shining its title.

Actor Chosen Jacobs makes his first appearance as Wendell Deaver, Henry's son. Jacobs played Mike Hanlon in It alongside his Castle Rock co-star Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. At some point, one has to wonder if these casting connections mean something — or if they're just a fun nod to other King adaptations.

Henry takes the Kid to Juniper Hill Psychiatric Hospital, formerly known as Juniper Hill Asylum. If Shawshank is the most frequently mentioned prison in King's work, Juniper Hill is his go-to psychiatric hospital.

Later in the episode, Henry meets Odin Branch (CJ Jones) and his interpreter, Willie (Rory Culkin). A lot of what Odin says... doesn't make much sense, unless you have a strong understanding of bioacoustics and psychoacoustics. But at least one of the concepts Odin tries to articulate should sound familiar to King fans. "All possible pasts, all possible presents," he says. "Schisma is the sound of the universe trying to reconcile them." What he's talking about is the idea of multiple universes, running parallel to one another.

In The Gunslinger, the first book of the Dark Tower series, Jake Chambers utters one of King's most famous lines: "Go then, there are other worlds than these." He's about to die, but it doesn't matter — because there's another universe in which Jake lives. It's too soon to say if Castle Rock will fully explore this idea, but remember the 217-237 discrepancy in the opening credits. Perhaps in one universe, the most haunted room at the Overlook is 217, but it's 237 in another. By that same logic, one universe had Jack Torrance attacking his family with a roque mallet — and, in another, an axe.

There are repeated allusions to Carrie in the Ruth-centric episode "The Queen." Sissy Spacek, who plays Ruth, took on the role of Carrie in the 1976 Brian De Palma film, the first adaptation of a Stephen King work. (Carrie was also King's first novel.) A bloody bath at the end of the episode is the most direct link: It's a clear visual homage to the bath Carrie takes at the end of the film.

A side-by-side comparison shows how similar the two scenes are.

But there are thematic links to Carrie as well, namely religious obsession. Matthew Deaver, Ruth's husband and Henry's father, is a dangerous zealot who demands that his wife and son pray, and turns violent in what he believes is the service of god's will. He sounds a lot like Carrie's mother, Margaret White.

New Castle Rock resident Gordon (Mark Harelik) did his PhD on the BTK Killer. King's novella A Good Marriage was inspired by the BTK Killer: The character of Bob Anderson was modeled after the real-life serial killer.

It's probably not a deliberate reference, but given the depth of nerdy King allusions on this series, you never know.

The link between Jackie and her uncle Jack continues. "You know your axes," Gordon tells her, a reference to Jack's notorious weapon of choice. (Again: in the movie version of The Shining, not the book.)

Later in the episode, Jackie goes even more Jack Torrance when she uses an axe to kill Gordon (and save Henry). Now Jack isn't the only axe murderer in the family — although Jackie did have a good reason.

Here's something interesting, though. Shortly thereafter, when she's trying to explain herself, Jackie says, "I wasn't myself anymore." Was she being controlled by the Kid, who seems to inspire people to violence? Or — and this is the more intriguing option — is her uncle inside her head? If that's the case, by the end of the season, will she be more Jack than Jackie?

We see a flashback to when Matthew Deaver's mother (Mamie Gummer) tried to kill him in his crib. Matthew's story already had allusions to Carrie — in Episode 7, he acted a lot like Margaret White — and here's another: Margaret also tried to kill her daughter when Carrie was a baby.

This is almost certainly more of an Easter egg than something significant, but the ice cream shop in Castle Rock is called Claiborne Creamery, a reference to Dolores Claiborne.

Molly tells Henry that the Kid — we know he's also Henry Deaver now, but let's keep calling him "the Kid" to avoid confusion — is looking for the door between his world and theirs. This recalls the Dark Tower series, in which there are sometimes literal doors from one world to the next.

Well, here's a surprise: The Kid AKA Henry Deaver reveals a different face to Henry, and it's terrifying. But what's going on here?

Here's one idea — the Kid is actually Legion, the demon underneath André Linoge in Storm of the Century. There's a definite resemblance, and Legion can also compel people to commit acts of violence, just as the Kid does earlier in the episode. It's not clear how this all relates to the Kid being Henry Deaver — did a demon take possession of his soul when he was moving between worlds?

In the post-credits scene, we see that Jackie is writing just like her uncle Jack. The title of her book? Overlooked, which has a significance she explains but is also a winking nod to the Overlook Hotel, where Jack went on his rampage. Jackie says she's going out west on a research trip, because "the best place to finish a book is where it started."

The obvious assumption is that Jackie will be headed to the Overlook Hotel — perhaps with an axe in tow.

But could this also be a reference to Misery? In the novel, Paul Sheldon finishes all his books in Sidewinder, Colorado, because that's where he wrote his first book — it's where his writing career started. (In the film, it's the real town of Silver Creek, specifically the Silver Creek Lodge, where Paul returns to complete each novel.) If Jackie is retracing her uncle's footsteps, she'll likely be following Paul's as well: Sidewinder is the town nearest to the Overlook Hotel.