With Solo: A Star Wars Story finally in theaters after a treacherous production, fans of a galaxy far, far away will now have to wait over a year and a half for the next Star Wars movie with Episode IX. Luckily, there is plenty to tide us over in the meantime, by going over the numerous references in Solo. Well, and also the countless books, comics, and TV shows Disney will inevitably release until then, but whatever.

Solo might be the densest Star Wars movie ever in terms of references and callbacks to the original films. Just about every scene has a least one nerdy Star Wars reference, if not more. There are even references to other films too, like Aliens and Indiana Jones sprinkled throughout. But for this article, we’re only going to be focusing on the Star Wars references that only true fans of the series will understand.

There will be spoilers for Solo: A Star Wars Story throughout the rest of this article, so turn back now if you haven’t seen the film yet. For those of you who are big fans of the series, you'll probably want to go back for a second (or third) viewing of the movie after this.

You think the surprise appearance by You-Know-Who at the end was the only reveal? Wait to you hear about some of the other stuff.

25 Lando’s Pronunciation Of Han

In the original trilogy, Lando is constantly mispronouncing Han’s name. Well, to an American audience he is anyway. Though because Lando’s actor, Billy Dee Williams, is American, it always seemed strange that he would pronounce Han’s name as “Han” with a hard ‘A’ rather than “Hon” like everyone else does. We still don’t really know why Williams pronounced it this way, though Solo gives us an in-universe answer at least.

When Han first meets Lando, Han pronounces sabacc (a card game that’s basically poker) with a hard ‘A’ sound, and Lando corrects him by pronouncing it as “sabocc.” When Han tells Lando his name, Lando pronounces it with a hard ‘A,’ just like how Han did with his pronunciation of sabacc. Han corrects Lando just as Lando did, but Lando keeps mispronouncing his name throughout the rest of the movie.

It’s the nerdiest possible reference in movie history, delving into not only an insanely specific reference almost nobody cares about, but also grammatical pronunciations. Star Wars has always had a bizarre fascination with trying to explain even the smallest inconsistencies in its lore, which can sometimes lead to situations like this. It works here because it’s a funny, equally insignificant gag.

24 Enfys Nest’s Poem On Her Helmet

Enfys Nest, the marauder who turned out to be one of the first rebels, wears her allegiance on her sleeve, or in this case on her helmet. If you look closely at the top of her helmet, you’ll notice strange symbols, which any Star Wars fan can tell you is writing in the Aurebesh language. But what the writing says can only be translated by only be translated by hardcore Star Wars fans (and anyone with access to Google, or those reading this article).

The writing is a poem, and reads: “until we reach the last edge, the last opening, the last star, and can go no higher.”

There could be more to it, but it’s hard to say since there are few photos of the character right now, and we never get a good look in the movie. That translation may not even be 100% accurate given how hard it is to see it.

But if that’s right, the poem speaks to the persistence of Nest’s character, and how far she’s willing to go to not only get her revenge, but also kick start a resistance movement against the Empire. Don’t be surprised if we see more of this character in the future.

23 Chewbacca “Disarming” A Guard

It’s been said that Wookies are known to rip people’s arms off. We’ve never seen that in a Star Wars movie before, mostly because they’re fun, kid-friendly action romps, and the act of seeing a giant monster tearing someone limb from limb wouldn’t really fit that tone. But Solo gave us that beautiful image on screen anyway in a humorous way. As part of a ploy to steal a plot MacGuffin, Han and Chewbacca go undercover. When they’re stuck in an elevator with only two guards, they enact their plan and attack the guards.

The camera focuses on Han taking out his guard, and then he looks over to see Chewy holding the arms of his guard up in the air in victory.

Han then scolds Chewy, saying “that uniform would have fit me perfectly.” Too bad he didn’t decide to go sleeveless.

It’s amazing that the director Ron Howard, the writers, and actors were able to play off this scene as funny. Think about, this loveable dog of a companion, loved by children everywhere, just ripped a man’s arms off. That’s one of the most horrific things we’ve ever seen in Star Wars, made lighter only by the fact that it’s a PG-13 rated movie so we don’t see rivers of blood pouring out of them.

22 Lando Cheating In Sabacc

Ever since Lando was first introduced, he was described as a scoundrel, not unlike Han himself, he was just flashier. The Millennium Falcon originally belonged to Lando (after he acquired it from somebody else, anyway) and Han won it in a game of Sabacc, which is basically the Star Wars version of poker, only with less dudes in cowboy hats and cheap cigars.

But in the original Legends novels, Han would flip between saying Lando cheated and lost anyway, or that they both cheated during the game, though it was never explicatively stated how, or whether this was actually true. In Solo, we see that Lando did in fact cheat, but hiding cards up his sleeve, and that Solo played fair. It’s actually kind of underwhelming to see that Han played fairly, it would have been way more entertaining to see the two try and out cheat each other.

It would have also been nice to see how the game actually works, because the movie keeps cutting between each hand. As far as we know, players are dealt a hand and can only raise or fold. But we also know dice are involved somehow, but we never see that aspect of the game either.

21 Destroying Two References With One Crystal Skull

Dryden Vos’s room in his luxurious yacht First Light is full of Easter eggs and references to other films. You’ll find the golden Fertility Idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark somewhere in his room if you look closely. Indiana Jones, of course, has a special connection to Star Wars as George Lucas produced the films. Together, they catapulted Harrison Ford's career upward.

If you look closely in this room, however, you’ll find another nod to Indy — a crystal skull. The skull could be a reference to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but this reference could be a coincidence, because who would want to reference that awful movie?

In reality, the skull is actually a reference to a crystal skull that acts as an energy source in the Legends novel Han Solo and the Lost Legacy.

Han Solo and the Lost Legacy was a 1980 novel by Brian Daley. It featured Han and Chewy running from bounty hunters, hiding on a planet called Dellat which is rumored to be full of treasures, and tracking down the Millennium Falcon by assassins and “killer robots” as the description reads. Like with most Star Wars novels from this time it wasn’t great and played fast and loose with established lore.

20 Benthic Two-Tubes

All you Benthic Two-Tubes fans out there are in for a real treat with Solo! It’s okay, we all know he’s the greatest character in SW history.

For those of you not part of the BTT fan club, Benthic Two-Tubes was a minor background character from Rogue One, part of Saw Gerrera rebel group that captured Bodhi early in the film. He managed to escape the destruction of NiJedha, and fought throughout the Galactic Civil War with the rebels. But he was with the rebels long before that even, as we saw in Solo. Near the end of the film, we see Benthic Two-Tubes is part of Enfys Nest’s Cloud-Riders rebel group.

He’s even more of a minor character here than he is in Rogue One, but his distinct gas mask and trench coat are unmistakable. The fact that he’s no longer with Nest at the time of Rogue One could mean Nest was eliminated, or that she wasn’t extreme enough for him. Saw was infamous even among rebels for his extreme, bloody tactics. Given that he has a cool mask and mysterious backstory, don’t be surprised if Benthic gets his own movie or book, because that’s how the franchise works now.

19 The Gangster On Tatooine

Later in the film, when Tobias Beckett seems to take his leave from Han, he mentions there’s a big job available for scoundrels and thieves like them from a big time gangster on the planet Tatooine. This gangster is not Obi-Wan Kenobi from A New Hope, but none other than Jabba the Hutt. Or at least one of the Hutts, anyway.

In A New Hope, we find Han taking on menial work so he can repay Jabba for screwing up a contract, which likely isn’t the one mentioned at the end of Solo since it takes place a decade prior, but it does indicate that Han’s been working for Jabba for a very long time. Han was tasked with carrying some kind of valuable cargo for Jabba, but ditched it when he ran across an Imperial patrol, which is why he landed in hot water in the first place.

It could also be setting up a sequel to Solo, but given the film’s dismal performance at the box office, Disney may be rethinking that one. Maybe it’ll instead set up the Boba Fett movie that’s going ahead with Logan director James Mangold, or it could even tie-in to that big appearance by a certain someone, somehow.

18 Aurra Sing

Aurra Sing is what you could call the typical Star Wars character. She first appeared in The Phantom Menace for all of three seconds. No seriously, three seconds. She was standing on a raised platform watching a pod race. She had no dialog, she wasn’t even named in the film. She was as much in the background as you could get. Yet, for whatever reason, Lucasfilm turned her into a full character, putting her in several comic books, video games, and The Clone Wars animated TV show.

Aurra Sing was a bounty hunter who worked for Darth Maul and other shady characters – basically Boba Fett before there was a Boba Fett.

In fact, part of her backstory is that she worked with Jango Fett, and trained Boba after his Jango’s passing. Together they tried and failed to eliminate Mace Windu, and separated afterward.

It was revealed by Beckett when he was speaking to Lando that he destroyed her, though why he did so he didn’t say. Actually, he said he merely pushed her and that it was that fall that caused her to say her echoey good-by  Technically, that also confirms that in the Star Wars universe it is indeed the fall that ends you, not the landing.

17 The “Zan” Sisters

Zan and Zu Pike were characters first introduced in the 1996 novel Shadows of the Empire, describing the events between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It’s no longer canon, of course, but the Pike sisters were twins, and fought in illegal underground fighting tournaments. They made another appearance in the follow-up novel Shadows of the Empire: Evolution, but aside from that, they’re about as obscure as you can get in Star Wars.

“They are masters of teras kasi, the Bunduki art called 'steel hands.' Twenty-six standard years old, no political affiliations, no criminal records in any of the major systems, and, as far as we are able to determine, completely amoral,” Guri describes them in the novel, possibly an even more obscure character.

Perhaps that’s why Val, Beckett’s lover, refers to them as the “Zan” sisters when talking about possible replacements for Han and Chewy, rather than the Pike sisters. It’s a super obscure reference for sure, and one that we can’t be 100% sure even is a reference because the name isn’t totally correct. Still, it’s incredible to think that writers Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon are such big Star Wars nerds they’d include such an obscure (and frankly uninteresting) reference.

16 Millennium Falcon’s Dejarik Game

Perhaps one of the most famous features inside the Millennium Falcon is that holographic board game Chewy and Han once played. The game is called Dejarik, and was referenced in The Force Awakens, and again in Solo. This time around, Beckett is trying to teach Chewy how to play, but being a temperamental Wookie, he’s not exactly taking it lightly. After apparently losing, Chewy slams the board, causing two of the holographic characters to flicker out of existence.

Come to think of it, a board game featuring holographic characters seems really pointless, right? It’d be more expensive than a game with physical pieces, which is a thing because sabacc is played with real cards, dice, and chips. So why is the Star Wars equivalent of chess played with holograms when poker isn’t?

Anyway, those two pieces were originally created for A New Hope, but for whatever reason, were never used in the film, meaning for all those years Han and Chewy played the game missing two pieces. Perhaps that’s the entire point of Solo after all, it’s not an origin story for Han, it’s an origin story for why those two pieces are missing from the Dejarik game.

15 Stealing From Scarif

The planet of Scarif plays a pivotal role in Rogue One as a home the vast Imperial database archives. It’s here where Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor capture the plans for the Death Star and beam them up to Scottie before meeting his end from that very same object of destruction. It was an effective ending, and drove home how little the Empire regarded its own people if they were willing to wipe out an entire base just like that.

Scarif is mentioned very early in Solo, and only briefly, which makes its name drop easy to miss. After the failed train robbery on Vandor, Beckett, Han, and Chewy meet with an angry Dryden Vos. Pleading for their lives, Beckett goes over a list of planets they could possibly rob to repay their debt, listing Scarif as a possible target, but is quickly shot down as its home to a massive Imperial presence.

It’s fun to think what would have happened if they did somehow manage to infiltrate the Imperial base and stumble across the Death Star plans then. How would things have gone differently in the Star Wars universe if Han had the plans before the Death Star was even built?

14 The Imperial March

At roughly the beginning of the movie, Qi’ra is captured at a space travel outpost, leaving Han on his own and on the run from Imperial soldiers. Without know what to do, he suddenly hears an Imperial recruitment song and looks up to find Imperial propaganda, telling him to join the Imperial Armed Forces. Not having any other options, he runs over to a convenient recruitment station and not only joins the Imperial Navy, but also gets his iconic last name in the cringiest scene in the whole film.

But what’s really notable about this scene for Star Wars fans is the song that’s played as part of the propaganda. It’s a song called the Imperial March, which first debuted in The Empire Strikes Back as Vader’s main theme, and again in Star Wars Rebels serving as a marching song for Imperial Soldiers.

Of course, that raises the question of where the music comes from. It was first played in the original movies, but now it’s being played within universe. Does that mean composer John Williams didn’t write the score, only stole it from the Imperial propaganda machine? Has Star Wars actually been a documentary this whole time?

13 Big Bossk

Bossk, who definitely wasn’t just a guy in a rubber Godzilla costume from Wal-Mart, first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back. He was a humanoid, reptilian creature known as a Trandoshan, one of several bounty hunters brought in alongside Boba Fett to help Darth Vader twirl his evil mustache, though we never really saw him again.

But, this being Star Wars, he made several appearances comics and novels, and most notably in The Clone Wars. It could be another nod towards the upcoming Boba Fett movie, as Bossk worked as a guard for Fett, and worked with him after two escaped prison. Yeah, they were somehow imprisoned at one point. He also worked with Aurra Sing, because that was the crossover event the world was craving for decades.

In Solo, it was revealed that Bossk was one of the mercenaries Dreyden Vos considered hiring for the train robbery on Vandor, before he ultimately went with Beckett and his crew. Why Vos passed on Bossk is never stated, but it is likely Disney wanted to keep the focus on Han as much as possible, and bringing in too many already established characters would have detracted from that. Plus, let’s be honest, who really cares about Bossk?

12 Pop! Goes The Weazel

Like Anthony Daniels, Warwick Davis has appeared in several Star Wars films. He played Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi (and the two awful made for TV films Caravan of Courage and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor), as two separate characters in The Phantom Menace, Rogue One, The Force Awakens, and The Last Jedi.

He also shows up in Solo, playing an old character. Here, his character’s name is Weazel, one of the Cloud-Riders that shows up with Enfys Nest near the end of the film. Weazel is the character he played in The Phantom Menace. In that film he was seen gambling on pod races, but in Solo he’s taking a more active role as an early rebel fighter. And yes, it’s spelled with a ‘Z’ because this is Star Wars, and nothing is allowed to be spelled correctly.

That’s the problem with cameos like this. The galaxy is a big place, and when you have so many of these cameos from old, uninteresting background characters, it makes space feel so much smaller and compact than it should. We’re supposed to believe this nobody character traveled across the galaxy and joined a resistance group and became a soldier just like that? It’s ridiculous, and Disney needs to stop recycling characters like this, or the galaxy is going to keep getting smaller and smaller.

11 Dathomir

Dathomir is a pretty terrible place in Star Wars, and home to a certain someone we’ll talk about later. But for now, let’s just say Dathomir is brought up in a conversation between a surprise character and Qi’ra at the end of the movie. Qi’ra is summoned by this mystery character (yeah, we all know its Maul, just humor me), and she doesn’t seem desperately happy about it.

Dathomir is home to the dark side of the force, and one look at it can tell you why.

It’s a red planet, made red by the light from a nearby star, and covered in a dense swamp. It’s also home to a group called the Nightsisters, a group of force-wielding evil witches. No, really. In fact, Dathomir is such a terrible place, Dawn of Rebellion, a sourcebook for a Star Wars tabletop game, tells us that only 600 people live on the planet.

Now the red rock seems to be the epicenter for the criminal organization Crimson Dawn, which is both the most generic name for an evil group ever devised, and also presumably more than just a group of smugglers. Judging by who they’re led by and where they’re based, something more has to be going on with them than spice trading.

10 The Maw

“Only a complete idiot would go into a place like that,” Lando Calrissian says to Han Solo, an act that by the gods of storytelling means the person being told this will inevitably have to go in said place very soon. That place incidentally is The Maw, a huge cluster of black holes located just outside the mining planet of Kessel. That’s what makes the Kessel Run so dangerous, and not really worth a visit except for desperate, dangerous criminals.

While the Maw’s been referenced in previous Star Wars stories, Solo is the first time we’ve ever actually seen it on film. But this isn’t the first time a group of characters have had to travel through it. The Maw was first mentioned in the 1994 novel Jedi Search, the first in the Jedi Academy series. In the book, Han and Chewy are captured and forced to work as slaves on Kessel. They manage to escape, and have to run to an Imperial Research Station located in the middle of The Maw to hide. Any of that sound familiar?

A lot of the plot of Solo and its characterizations are taken from Legends novels, and The Maw is perhaps the greatest example, nothing’s even been changed about it, it’s exactly the same as it’s always been portrayed in the past.

9 Tag & Bink

Tag and Bink (aka Tag Greenly and Bink Otauna) are two Star Wars characters created by humorist Kevin Rubio, first appearing in the parody comic Tag & Bink Are Dead. The stories were never canon, even before Disney bought LucasArts, which gave Rubio free reign to do whatever he wanted to do with the characters; a fact he took advantage of.

Tag and Bink are, in short, responsible for every single event in the original six Star Wars movies.

They hacked computers in the Jedi Order and wiped all records of the planet Kamino, helped Anakin win over Padme, caused the Millennium Falcon to be captured by the Death Star, allowed Leia and Chewbacca to escape Cloud City, and all sorts of other adventures.

The thing is, the two are idiots, and managed to do all of this by complete accident. Perhaps it’s because of them Anakin went on his meme-tastic rant about how much he hates sand.

Solo director Ron Howard loved the characters so much he decided to put the two in the movie, though apparently their scene was cut from the film. However, don’t be surprised to see it in the deleted scenes on the Blu-Ray.

8 C-3PO Isn’t Around…

C-3PO is in every single Star Wars movie in some capacity, including the cringiest cameo in Star Wars history in Rogue One where the film suddenly stops and shines a flashing arrow above him, and you can hear the filmmakers shout “Hey! Look! C-3PO is here!” He’s even in the new trilogy, though the writers clearly don’t know what to do with him so he’s just kind of standing around in the background a lot of the time.

But that tradition has finally come to an end. The character isn’t anywhere in Solo, and that’s a good thing. R2-D2 isn’t around either, by the way. It’d be weird seeing one without the other. It’s a surprising exclusion given Star Wars’… enthusiasm, shall we say, for self-reference and keeping traditions alive. But it was the right choice for the movie, because it wouldn’t make any sense for the character to be there, and again, Rogue One showed how bad it can look forcing an appearance for the character can be.

Some traditions just have to die, but that doesn’t mean the man behind that tradition can’t be in the movie. Having your face covered helps with that.

7 …But Anthony Daniels Has A Cameo

Anthony Daniels has played C-3PO in all the movies and in the animated TV shows, and while the golden robot boy isn’t in Solo, the man in the costume is, just wearing a different costume.

When Solo, Chewbacca, Lando, and the rest of the team have escaped the mines and are prepare to leave Kessel, Lando goes back to rescue his own droid, L3-37, who’s been shot in battle. Lando gets pinned down however, and Han tries to rescue him, only to get pinned down himself. Chewbacca is standing near the Falcon ready to go, along with another Wookie that he rescued earlier in the mine.

Chewy decides to go rescue the three himself, but before he goes, he hugs the Wookie next to him goodbye, as they run off in another direction.

That Wookie, named Tak, is played by Anthony Daniels, which explains why he’s so much shorter than Chewbacca.

Funny enough, this is the same Wookie everyone thought was Chewy’s wife because of the trailers, but it was a ruse all along. Honestly, it would have been more interesting if that was Chewy’s wife, but whatever, we’ll settle for a furry appearance by a longtime Star Wars veteran.

6 The VCX-100 Is Real

When Han first meets Lando, he’s trying to win the Millennium Falcon. Without anything having anything to gamble, he bluffs, saying he’s got a VCX-100 that he’s willing to bet for the Falcon. Well, the VCX-100 is a real ship, at least in the sense that it exists within Star Wars, and Hans description of it matches almost perfectly with Ghost.

VCX-100 is a class of a light freighter ship, and Ghost is the name of one such ship belonging to the Twi’lek Hera Syndulla, a major character in the Star Wars Rebels animated show. Hera created her own resistance movement against the Empire, eventually marrying and having children with the Jedi Kanan Jarrus.

Ghost played a crucial part through Star Wars Rebels show, fighting at the Battle of Scarif and Endor, the last time anything’s been said of the ship. The Ghost was kind of like the Millennium Falcon of the show, and Hera and the others treated the ship about the same way Han treats the Falcon. You could even say it was the Dark Souls of space ships, but that’d be really weird. The fact that Lando would be interested in such a piece of junk shows how much he loves winning and gambling.