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This article contains spoilers for Alien: Romulus.

Alien: Romulus is replete with satisfying easter eggs to its own franchise. From favorite dialogue callbacks to a returning character (of sorts) that no one saw coming, the movie was a wonderland for folks familiar with the xenomorph saga. But right at the beginning of the film, there was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to another kind of alien, not the kind that Rain & Co were about to encounter. No, the easter egg I'm talking about wasn't a reference to the extraterrestrials of their world... but of our own.

Allow me to explain.

The Zeta Reticuli Incident

The abduction story of Betty and Barney Hill is one of the founding myths of American UFO lore, and as you can imagine, there's a lot to their story (read Stanton Freidman's Captured! to get the whole story). For our purposes, I'll just cover the basic beats of the tale, which go something like this: In September of 1961, the Hills said they were traveling home to New Hampshire from a trip to Montreal. As they traveled down a remote country road, Betty spotted a point of light in the sky that acted erratically. The couple tracked the glowing object for a while until, quite suddenly, it dropped into the road ahead of them, forcing Barney to stop the car.

The couple reported seeing a spacecraft that was "pancake-shaped," and inside it, a handful of figures that match the 'little green men' depiction of aliens in popular culture. Shortly thereafter, the couple would reawaken to discover themselves continuing their journey home, with a portion of their evening gone from their memories. Later, under hypnotherapy, the Hills would recall their close encounter in great detail, with one of them claiming that she was told where the aliens had come from.

According to Betty Hill, the inside of the spacecraft displayed a "star map" of the alien's origins. Betty drew this map based on her recovered memories, and not long after, an amateur astronomer named Marjorie Fish declared that she had matched the map with a place already known to the scientific community: a distant, double-sun star system named Zeta Reticuli.

After Fish's discovery, some ufologists began calling the Hills' abduction the 'Zeta Reticuli Incident,' and even started calling their alleged abductors 'Zeta Reticulans.' Eventually, more information about the Zeta Reticuli star system made Fish publically doubt her notion that she had discovered the location in Betty Hill's star map, but her disavowal came too late - Zeta Reticuli had already become a staple of American UFO culture.

How this connects to Alien: Romulus

Fast forward some half-century later, to when Alien: Romulus was opening in theaters. At the very start of the film, we watch what we'll learn is a Weyland-Yutani ship encounter what we'll learn are the remains of the original xenomorph from 1978's Alien. This discovery makes it back to a ship called the Romulus, where the xenomorph proves to still be a threat, and eventually endangers the lives of the freedom-seeking pirates that break into the ghost vessel.

But before all that, we get a brief glimpse of the location of the xenomorph's discovery, as displayed on one of the retrotech screens aboard the Weyland-Yutani ship. And you guessed it, the star system where Weyland-Yutani finds the remains of the Nostromo and the creature that killed its crew...

Is Zeta Reticuli.

For a deeper dive into the events of the movie, check out Popverse's Alien: Romulus ending explained. Just be aware of even deeper spoilers than you read here. And to avoid those spoilers altogether, go see Alien: Romulus, in theaters now.

If you love aliens bursting out of chests and hugging your face, then we have all you could want from  Popverse's Alien watch order, details on where Romulus fits into the Alien timeline, and all you need to know  on the upcoming Aliens TV show with Timothy Oliphant.