Did You Catch Those Sneaky Stephen King Easter Eggs in The Dark Tower Trailer?

After seven long years of waiting, the official trailer for The Dark Tower has finally arrived. In addition to giving us an excuse to stare longingly at Idris Elba than is typically appropriate, the first look at the highly anticipated film adaptation of Stephen King's 1982 fantasy thriller also features two major Easter eggs die-hard fans of the horror novelist will recognize.

To give you some context, the film follows a young boy named Jake (Tom Taylor) who's been having visions of two men from another world: Gunslinger Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) and The Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). Roland is a John Wayne-esque warrior from a desolate place in Mid-World called Gilead, where the apocalypse has already ravaged everything in sight. The Man in Black, who readers of The Stand might know better as Randall Flagg, is an evil, interdimensional sorcerer (of sorts) hell-bent on destroying everything he touches. The tower is a mythical hub for the multiverse — it basically functions as an axle, while all the possible worlds are wheels — and is the key to all space and time, which Roland wants to use to go back and undo the fall of Gilead. He needs Jake's help to reach the tower before Randall and the Crimson King (Randall's master).

In the trailer, we see Jake at an appointment with a psychiatrist shortly before he opens the portal that delivers him to Roland, when the office building begins shaking from one of the mysterious earthquakes that have been plaguing NYC. As the camera zooms in on the psychiatrist's rattling desk, we're given the first clue from director Nikolaj Arcel that more than one King universe is at play here: sitting on the desk is a black and white photograph of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining.

It's an interesting connection to make since Jake has a psychic ability similar to The Shining's young hero, Danny Torrance. It's his power to "shine" that helps him to later open the portal to Mid-World and set the story in motion. The photo of The Overlook isn't the only reference to another King story, either. After Jake travels to Mid-World in the trailer, there's a shot of him exploring the ruins of Gilead. He makes his way through a wooded area to a dilapidated amusement park sign, which reads "Pennywise House of . . ."

It's an obvious call back to one of King's most infamous monsters, Pennywise the Dancing Clown from IT. A metal hand clutching some balloons is also half-buried next to the sign, and you can just make out the striped tip of a clown hat jutting out of the earth nearby (we all know how Pennywise prefers to remain underground). In IT, it's revealed that the shape-shifting evil being comes from "outside." It's a reference to the space between the levels in the Dark Tower (called the Todash Darkness) which houses incomprehensible evil. While Roland and Jake won't face off against Pennywise in this movie, both the IT and The Shining Easter eggs serve as a reminder of the importance of other worlds in The Dark Tower universe.