6 ways Prey nods to the other Predator movies

4. Taabe’s cut

At one point in the film, both Naru and her brother Taabe are captured by European pioneers. Naru refuses to tell them what she knows about the Predator, and as a result they torture Taabe by slicing a deep gash diagonally across his chest.

The placement of the cut is a very subtle nod to the first Predator film, when the half-Native American tracker Billy (Sonny Landham) cuts his own chest with a knife as he waits to face the Predator. Taabe’s cut is in the exact same place. Trachtenberg has talked previously about how the concept for Prey came about as a response to Billy’s character in the original Predator, and this was a cool way to pay homage to him without making it too obvious.

5. The final showdown

The final showdown between Naru and her alien adversary has a lot of references to the original Predator film. To start, she ingests a pinch of a flower called orange totsiyaa, which cools her blood and hides her from the Predator’s infrared vision before facing it. While Dutch didn’t have any orange totsiyaa on hand, he achieved the same effect by covering his body with mud right before his own date with the Predator.

Then, once the alien approaches, there’s one scene where it’s directly behind Naru as she stands frozen and invisible to it. Amber Midthunder’s eyes go wide as it nears, looming over her just before she steps quietly aside to let it pass. In the 1987 film, Dutch and the Predator play a game of cat and mouse through the trees before he’s eventually cornered in a rocky outcropping, where the Predator comes up behind him in a very similar fashion and he’s forced to remain perfectly still to avoid being seen. There’s even a similar emphasis on Schwarzenegger’s eyes in the moment.

Lastly, after Naru knocks the Predator into the quicksand pit, she lays back against a tree and attempts to goad the Predator into one last trap, saying “c’mon, c’mon…do it!” This mirrors one of the final moments in Dutch’s confrontation with the alien in the original movie.