The Fall Guy’s 18 Movie References & Quotes

David Leitch’s The Fall Guy is an exciting new action movie, and it’s jam-packed with quotes and references to films and TV shows. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt lead The Fall Guy cast as stuntman Colt Seavers and director Jody Moreno, a pair with a complicated past relationship. After a horrific injury nearly ended his career, Colt is brought back to set to investigate the disappearance of Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a despicable, entitled movie star whom Colt has previously done stunt work for.

The Fall Guy has often been described as a love letter to stuntwork and the grueling, uncelebrated effort put into making some of cinema’s most memorable moments. David Leitch’s film is an action rom-com with an enormous heart and a deep love and appreciation for film culture, demonstrated by various references. The Fall Guy is a terrific experience for movie lovers, and it’s been met with acclaim from critics and audiences alike, with an 83% Tomatometer and an even better 87% audience score.

18 Rocky

Rocky’s Monologue From Rocky Balboa Is Quoted

The first reference made in The Fall Guy is to 2006’s Rocky Balboa. It’s not the best Rocky movie, but it’s remembered for Rocky’s gut-wrenching speech to his son. The phrase “But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep movin’ forward” is repeated in the 2024 movie by Winston Duke’s Dan Tucker, encouraging Colt to return to stunt work and “get back to rolling cars instead of parking them.”

The quote is regarded as one of the best motivational speeches in the film, with a powerful performance from the great Sylvester Stallone. It’s especially funny since Colt Seaver wasn’t willing to return yet, and when Dan quoted Rocky, it really hit him and Colt looked at Dan and said, “You can’t quote Rocky like that on me,” showing that he was especially moved by the reference.

17 Fast & Furious

The Fall Guy Quotes The Fast And The Furious

The Fast and the Furious is another movie quoted by Dan, who says, early in the film: “I live my life a quarter mile at a time.” This is a reference to Dominic Toretto’s line from the original 2001 film. The Fall Guy also features an intense driving scene in a parking garage, which isn’t a direct reference but bears some similarity to Tokyo Drift. At the end of the day, if The Fall Guy is going to pay homage to any movie, making it something like The Fast and the Furious makes a lot of sense.

That franchise is about major stunts and dangerous tasks for the stuntmen involved. The entire basis of Colt Seaver’s world is to take a stuntman who does wild and dangerous stunts and put him in a real-life dangerous situation. If Colt existed in the real world, he would work in movies like The Fast and the Furious and would likely live by the same motto that Dom initially said and Dan quoted in this moment.

16 Memento

Ryder’s Sticky Note Problem Is Compared To Christopher Nolan’s Memento

One of the many quirks of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Tom Ryder is that he uses sticky notes to remind himself of things. Hannah Waddingham’s Gail Meyer, Tom Ryder’s producer, refers to his sticky note usage getting out of hand, comparing it to Memento. This joke is played out even further when Colt enters Ryder’s apartment, which is covered with an absurd amount of sticky notes.

Memento is a Christopher Nolan film where a man named Leonard Shelby, with short-term memory loss, intends to solve his wife’s murder. However, thanks to his condition, he has to write things down on sticky notes or his arms so he won’t forget. He even goes as far as to tattoo the clues on his body, and use the notes that are everywhere to lead him to the truth. it is very similar to what Tom has to do to get through basic life without any real reason other than his basic incompetence.

15 Miami Vice

Colt Wears A Miami Vice Jacket

In The Fall Guy, Colt Seavers wears a jacket with the Miami Vice logo on the back. He states in the film that the TV series was his first job. Though the movies he works on in the film are fictional, Miami Vice was a real series in the 1980s, produced by Michael Mann, who later directed the film of the same name. Miami Vice was a hit series in its time, known for its influential impact on television and broader ’80s culture.

This is an even bigger reference since Miami Vice aired from 1984 to 1989, with Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in the lead roles. The Fall Guy aired from 1981 to 1986, with Lee Majors and Heather Thomas in the lead roles. This means that Miami Vice actually aired at the same time as The Fall Guy but premiered three years later, meaning Colt Seavers (in the TV version) was already working as a bounty hunter before Miami Vice ever existed as a TV show.

14 Dumbo

The Dancing Pink Elephants Scene From Dumbo Is Mentioned

In one of his first stops in the search for Ryder, Colt visits a nightclub to speak with Ryder’s dealer for information. Before the scene breaks into action, a reference is made to the classic animated film Dumbo and the scene with wacky dancing pink elephants. In the same scene, Colt’s drink is spiked, and he starts tripping and imagining unicorns everywhere he goes for the next 20 or so minutes.

This is a fun scene because Colt Seaver has hallucinations of unicorns, which kind of sets the pink elephants’ scene from Dumbo in a very different light from the original Disney animated kid’s release. The entire scene also breaks down the difference between movies and cartoons. The dealer says that movies pretend to be real, but cartoons don’t pretend to be anything but what they are, which leads to The Fall Guy creating one of the strangest unreal scenes in its entire running time.

13 Notting Hill

Colt Reminds Jody How Much She Loves Notting Hill

Amidst Colt’s dangerous search for information about Ryder, he takes a break for a several-minute-long split-screen phone call with Jody, where she ponders how to finish the third act. Her film features a love story that mirrors her and Colt’s, so she chats with him regarding the possibility of her characters getting back together when, really, she’s referring to the two of them.

Colt reminds Jody that she loves the movie Notting Hill, which has a famously happy ending, encouraging her to believe in a positive outcome for their love. In Notting Hill, Julia Roberts plays Anna, a famous actress who meets a bookstore owner named Will (Hugh Grant). While they are from very different worlds, the two end up falling in love, and in the end, they find a way for their love to work despite all the differences and obstacles that stand in their way.

12 Love Actually

Colt Reminds Jody She Watches Love Actually Every Year

In the same speech about Notting Hill, Colt also mentions that Jody watches Love Actually every year around the holiday season. This furthers his point, though she mentions that her last time watching the movie, after her split with Colt a year prior, she didn’t connect as much with its ending. Love Actually is another famous rom-com with several interconnected stories of couples finding and losing love, all set during the holiday season.

Not all the stories had happy endings, as in some cases, a man cheats on his wife, and other stories see people just struggling to get along. Despite that, as a rom-com, there were some happy endings in the end. It is an interesting comment by Jody, as she says that she can’t connect as well with some happy endings depending on where she is in her life at the time. It was also nice foreshadowing because if she wants to find happiness again, things will have to change.

11 Pretty Woman

Colt Mixes Up The Plot Of Notting Hill With Pretty Women

The joke of the Notting Hill scene is that Colt mixes up the movie’s plot with another Julia Roberts classic, Pretty Woman. The 1990 release sees a wealthy businessman and a prostitute fall for each other, and Colt suggests that the relationship might not have worked out well, as the film’s ending implies. Pretty Woman is considered one of the best rom-coms of all time and is one of the films that solidified Roberts as one of the biggest stars of the 1990s.

It was a funny moment that continues to show Jody’s inability to believe in happy endings anymore, thanks to her real-life problems. She mentions that not only is Love, Actually ruined for her now, but so is the ending of Notting Hill. Colt seems confused because he doesn’t consider Notting Hill to have a happy ending because Julia Roberts’s character could end up working the streets again, which was very much not the plot of Notting Hill. He laughs it off by asking, “what do I know?“

10 The Fugitive

Dan Compares Colt’s Situation To The Fugitive

About mid-way through The Fall Guy, Colt and Dan return to Ryder’s apartment to look around for the movie star’s phone passcode. Shortly after they find it and the evidence they need, Dan suggests to Colt: “If this were ‘The Fugitive’ and you were Harrison Ford, wouldn’t the bad guys be turning up right about now?” This refers to the 1993 action flick, where Ford plays a man on the run from the law after being wrongfully accused of killing his wife.

The moment of calling back to a classic thriller to show the tropes in a movie that will soon follow the same tropes is a little too on the nose, but for this film, it actually works. There is also a fun side to this Easter egg homage, as The Fall Guy star Ryan Gosling took the lead in the sequel to Blade Runner, while The Fugitive star Harrison Ford returned to reprise his role as Rick Deckard.

9 The Last Of The Mohicans

The Fall Guy Uses The Last Of The Mohicans “I Will Find You!” Quote

After The Fugitive quote, Colt and Dan realize they’re about to be swarmed with enemies and quickly grab whatever weapons they can find. Both attempt to grab a hatchet, imagining themselves using it in combat like in The Last of the Mohicans, a historical adventure war film with some hatchet-throwing action. In the movie, Daniel Day-Lewis’s character bellows, “No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you!” to his romantic interest, which is also quoted in The Fall Guy.

That is two different callbacks to the Daniel Day-Lewis movie. In The Last of the Mohicans, Day-Lewis stars as Nathaniel “Hawkeye” Poe, a British Army Major who is sent to New York during the French and Indian War. This is a historical romance novel that follows two frontier sisters, Alice and Cora, who try to find their way back to their home when they meet Hawkeye. In The Last of the Mohicans, Hawkeye and Cora fall in love, and that leads to this iconic quote.

8 Jason Bourne

Colt Compares Himself To Jason Bourne

After the action sequence, Colt talks to Jody on the phone and states, “I had no choice. I had to do some Jason Bourne sh**!” A Jason Bourne reference is also made during the fine between Colt and Dan and Ryder’s goons. The Jason Bourne series is one of the most popular action franchises of the 21st century and one of the many action movies mentioned in The Fall Guy.

In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is a man with amnesia who wakes up after getting shot and nurses himself back to health without knowing anything about his past or who he is. However, when people attack him, he is instinctively able to fight back and does incredible hand-to-hand fighting and weapons expertise. When Colt fights the bad guys and does a lot of what his stuntman training has already taught him to do, his comparison to Bourne is exactly right.

7 Dwayne The Rock Johnson

The Fall Guy References The Rock’s WWE Moves

During the fight scene, Dan pulls off an impressive stunt move, flipping one of Ryder’s goons over him, yelling out, “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson!” Dwayne Johnson is one of the highest-grossing movie actors of all time. However, The Fall Guy doesn’t refer to any of his action flicks, such as Red Notice or Fast Five, but rather his famous WWE career.

This isn’t a callback to a movie, but with Johnson as such a big star, it still plays the same role. Known as The Rock, Johnson made his name in WWE before moving on to Hollywood. Thanks to his wrestling training and lineage (his father was 1970s WWE superstar Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather was Hall of Fame legend Peter Maivia), he brought his wrestling moves to the world of his films. Watching him in F5, he used actual pro wrestling moves when fighting Dom, and that explains this callback.

6 Tom Cruise

Colt Asks For Tom Cruise’s Face To Be Deepfaked Onto His

Tom Cruise is one of the most legendary film actors ever, known for 40 years of box office hits, critical masterpieces, and some of the most insane stunts ever captured in film. He’s mentioned briefly in The Fall Guy when Colt is shown the process for using deepfake technology to plant Ryder’s face on his body. He jokes with the woman in charge of the machine that he’d like Cruise’s face placed on him.

This is also a big deal because there were a few moments in the movie where it seemed like the Fall Guy was shading Cruise. That is because Cruise has become known for doing his own stunts, no matter how dangerous they are. He has body doubles, but he wants to do all his big stunts, so people see it is him doing it. This leads to Ryder always saying he does his own stunts when talking to reporters, even though he doesn’t do his stunts and Colt does them all.

5 James Bond

Colt Calls Ryder A “Bond Villain”

After Colt attempts to escape, Ryder captures him and ties him to a chair on the docks. Ryder plans to kill him and leave on his boat, framing Colt for the murder he committed. Of course, before he can do so, Ryder reveals the master plan he and Gail put in place. Jokingly, Colt refers to Ryder as a “Bond villain.” A similar setup with 007 tied to a chair while the villain, though usually more competent and threatening than Ryder, reveals their devious plan has been used many times.

This is just a comedy throwback since the one big trope in almost every James Bond movie sees the villain describing their entire plan to Bond, which allows him the keys to do what he needs to do to stop them when he escapes. By not killing Bond and letting the plan happen, the villain’s over sharing marks their downfall. That is exactly what Ryder does here, as he is the worst part of Bond villains all rolled into an arrogant wannabe actor who can’t pull off his plan without bragging about it.

4 Lord Of The Rings

A Character In The Fall Guy Yells “You Shall Not Pass!”

The Lord of the Rings reference is one of the easiest to miss in the movie, but it happens during The Fall Guys‘ ending action sequence. Amid the conflict, a character yells, “You shall not pass!” This quote references The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf defends the bridge from the Balrog before slamming his staff down in an epic fashion. There are many iconic quotes from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it’s one of the most commonly used.

This has been a line that has been spoofed and memed many times since the Peter Jackson trilogy dominated the box office. Of course, the line is actually “you cannot pass” in the Tolkien novel, but this is one of those lines that took on a brand-new meaning in the film, since Ian McKellen’s delivery of the line was so loud and royal. This makes the countless movies and TV shows that have used the line since then something that has become a norm in the years since Gandolf yelled it.

3 Thelma & Louise

Colt & Ryder’s Driving Stunt Is Compared To Thelma & Louise’s Ending

In the climactic action sequence in The Fall Guy, Colt jumps into a car with Ryder, taking him hostage as he pulls off a wild car jump stunt. Ryder, who’s notoriously been afraid of doing his stunts despite loving to take credit, freaks out, suggesting that they’re going to die in the car. Their situation is compared to the movie Thelma & Louise, which ends with the titular pair of women accelerating their car over a desert cliff, resulting in their deaths.

This is mostly just a homage to that classic scene, without calling too much attention to it. It is also a nice moment since it really puts Ruder in his place after he did so much bragging about how he lives and works without fear. Seeing him scared to death while Colt is driving along without a care in the world shows which one of these two men is the real hero. In Thelma & Louise, it all ended in tragedy, and both women were brave in the end, so that is very different here with Ryder.

2 Dune

The Fall Guy Uses Dune’s Iconic Musical Queue

Throughout The Fall Guy, Jody is directing a sci-fi epic called Metalstorm. In the final action sequence, a desert sequence is being shot, and the fictional movie’s musical score is revealed, having the same musical queues as 2021’s Dune. Several of their shot setups have a lot in common with Dune and, seemingly, Dune: Part Two. The Fall Guy also has a major meta-actor cameo, which is used to further reference Dune.

In Dune, Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, the son of the head of the House Atreides, who has to take the battle to the House Harkonnen to save the planet of Arrakis. Almost all of the action takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis, which looks very similar to the big action setpiece in The Fall Guy. The big cameo is from Jason Momoa, who stars as Duncan Idaho, a swordmaster who fights for the House Atreides. His cameo sees him replacing Ryder in Metal Storm.

1 Shrek

A Fan In A Shrek Costume Can Be Seen In The ComicCon Scene

In the epilogue of The Fall Guy, Jody’s movie is seen playing at Hall-H in ComicCon like she’d been dreaming. A trailer is played with a re-cast star and some incredible-looking stunt work, and various characters are shown in the audience. One audience member at ComicCon is dressed like Shrek. This is simply a way to add someone dressed up like a popular character at a comic convention, which is par for the course at these events.

David Leitch’s The Fall Guy is filled with quick jokes and references, many of which are easy to miss. This homage to Shrek was mostly ignored because it wasn’t important in any way compared to Jason Momoa’s arrival for the fake movie-within-the-movie. By the time the original Fall Guy stars Lee Majors (Colt Seavers) and Heather Thomas (Jody Moreno) show up in the post-credits, many of the homages were completely forgotten.