In a crossover that no one could have possibly seen coming, a scene in Detective Pikachu canonizes Home Alone into the live-action Pokémon universe. The pocket monster-packed film includes one of Kevin McCallister’s favorite movies in a unexpected nod to both the holiday classics that brought Macaulay Culkin to the limelight and Detective Pikachu’s light film noir inspiration.
Home Alone is overflowing with cinematic moments that continue to stand the test of time, but one in particular stands as one of the movie’s most memorable and well-done. Famously, Kevin McCallister is seen watching Angels with Filthy Souls, which appears to be an early-to-mid 20th century film with strong noir motifs, and he later uses the film to ward off pizza delivery boys and home invaders. In the scene, a Tommy gun-wielding man named Johnny suddenly blows away Snakes, a young man sent to shake him down for money, in a hail of lead after telling the thug to get “ugly, yellow, no-good keister” off his property. In a twist only rivaled by Detective Pikachu’s ending, Angels with Filthy Souls isn’t a real movie and was actually created solely for Home Alone.
Home Alone fans were likely astonished, then, to see the Angels with Filthy Souls clip playing on an on-screen TV while Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) searches his missing detective father’s home office before meeting Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds). Embittered at his father being a workaholic, Tim is initially startled by the pseud0-film’s well-known threatening dialogue before exasperatedly noting his father’s penchant for the old detective genre and turning off the TV. Though it’s clearly a fun inclusion aimed at older theatergoers on the filmmakers’ part, as Angels with Souls’ existence in Detective Pikachu confirms one of two possibilities: Home Alone exists in the live-action Pokémon canon, or both Home Alone and Detective Pikachu exist within the same universe.
The former conclusion is easy to draw, but the second is more compelling, strangely enough. Though there’s the potential that Tim coincidentally walked in during the renowned Home Alone scene and simply assumed it was a real detective film, it’s also left open-ended to interpret his recognition of Angels with Filthy Souls to mean that it’s a real, in-universe movie - just like in Home Alone. Director Rob Letterman seems to disagree with this level of speculation about the brief Detective Pikachu Easter egg, telling Fresh Fiction TV that they used the clip “just as a laugh” and “it means nothing to the Pokémon Universe, but means everything to [his] generation… that’s slightly older than the Pokémon generation.”
In addition to this link to Home Alone, Detective Pikachu has opened the floodgates for potential Pokémon spinoffs and crossovers as the live-action Pokémon film universe establishes itself, even including a Jigglypuff film in the same vein as A Star is Born. Who knows, maybe one day a Pokémon mistakenly left to its own devices will follow in Kevin McCallister’s footsteps and repel Team Rocket home invaders on the big screen.
Next: Pokémon’s Movie Future After Detective Pikachu Explained
