Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga: 64 Easter eggs and obscure references

In LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the Star Wars galaxy is yours to explore, smash apart, and rebuild. You can play through abbreviated, kid-friendly comedy versions of all nine of the numbered Star Wars films, run wild across two dozen planets, and cycle through about 400 playable characters and costume variants. The Skywalker Saga might be the most complete and accessible Star Wars video game experience to date.

The game is also overflowing with jokes, references, and background gags for attentive players, particularly if you’re a chapter-and-verse Star Wars fan with one foot in its expanded universe of comics, novels, and video games. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best hidden treats we found during our playthrough.

Environmental Storytelling

While many recognizable Star Wars landmarks from the nine episodes are incorporated into the game via puzzles and side missions, there are a few artifacts — plus some foreign objects — hidden away in nooks and crannies:

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• At Lars Homestead on Tatooine, you’ll find a T-16 Skyhopper parked outside Luke’s garage. You can unlock a T-16 elsewhere in the game, but this one’s just a piece of scenery.

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• On Dagobah, if you wander up to the clearing in the northwest of Dragonsnake Bog, you’ll find a tripedal artificial structure. That’s an E3-standard starship lifeboat, the craft that Yoda took to Dagobah to escape the Jedi purge.

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• While sneaking around Starkiller Base during The Force Awakens, if you disguise yourself as a Stormtrooper and unlock the door directly across from the interrogation room, you’ll find the janitor’s closet, with a cleaning cart and a holographic blueprint for a motorized floor-buffer. Presumably, this used to be Finn’s workspace.

Aurebesh You Didn’t Catch All of These

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

Like most visual media in the Star Wars universe, The Skywalker Saga makes liberal use of Aurebesh, which is the written form of Basic, the language spoken by most of the main characters. And since every letter in our Latin-script alphabet has a corresponding letter in Aurebesh, the latter can easily be translated into English. As such, you can stop on any street in the Uscru District on Coruscant and translate the name of every storefront and find a few inside jokes. Some shop names include:

• Arm and a Leg
• Hutt’s Headgear
• Corellian Cantina
• Crispy Fried Dewback
• A New Home

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

There’s also Aurebesh aplenty in the game’s cinematics, most of which go by too quickly to translate without grabbing a screenshot. (Unless you’re actually fluent. We know you’re out there and we salute you.) For instance, each boss in the game gets an introductory name card, featuring their name in English (or localized language) and then a subtitle in Aurebesh. Here’s the full name card for every boss in the main story campaign:

• Anakin Skywalker: Ex-Podracer and Current Sith Apprentice
• BB-9E: First Order BB-Series Astromech Droid
• BB-Boss: BB-9E’s Big Brother
• Boba Fett: The Galaxy’s Most Infamous Bounty Hunter
• Captain Phasma: Chrome Dome
• Count Dooku: Never Loses His Head
• Darth Maul: Red Dude with a Bad Attitude
• Darth Vader: Loves the Dark Side, Hates Sand
• Darth Sidious: Also Known as the Senate
• Dianoga: Keep One Eye Open
• Emperor Palpatine (Return of the Jedi): Emperor, Sith Lord, Senate
• Emperor Palpatine (The Rise of Skywalker): Yes, Him Again
• FN-2199: Traitor!
• General Grievous: More Sabers than Sense
• Jabba the Hutt: Crime Lord of the Outer Rim
• Jango Fett: Donor for the Clone Army!
• Kijimi Crooks: Local Enforcers
• Knights of Ren: Friends Make the Worst Enemies
• Krayt Dragon: Krayt Balls of Fire
• Kylo Ren: Serious Daddy Issues
• Luke Skywalker: Did You Do It?
• Praetorian Guards: Red Guard Redemption
• Rancor: Jabba’s Pet Monster, Pateesa
• Sovereign Protectors: They Protec But They Also Attac

Outside of the bosses, there are a ton of other little extras hidden in Aurebesh throughout the game. Here are a few of our favorites:

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• Revenge of the Sith contains the game’s most brilliant background gag, which begins during the opening cinematic when Anakin and Obi-Wan’s Jedi Interceptors blast through a battle droid’s retirement party on the hull of a Trade Federation cruiser. Several missions later, Obi-Wan arrives on Utapau in search of General Grievous. He speaks with Pau’an leader Tion Medon, who shows him a tablet computer displaying an intercepted text message thread between Grievous and a battle droid. The messages are only visible for about a second, but the enclosed conversation is actually about planning the surprise retirement party that Obi-Wan crashed earlier.

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• During the opening mission of A New Hope, R2-D2 and C-3PO hurry to an escape pod aboard the Tantive IV. The outer door of the escape pod reads “Droid-O-Matic.”

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• At the Imperial security checkpoint in Mos Eisley, a Stormtrooper is reading a newspaper with the headline “Blue milk sales up!”

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• While on Dagobah during The Empire Strikes Back, Luke carries a photo of himself, Han, and Leia as they appeared in A New Hope. The caption on the photo is “Family.”

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• During the Endor mission briefing aboard Home One in Return of the Jedi, Mon Mothma presses a button and knocks a two-digit counter back to zero. The text above it reads “Days Since Bothan Incident.”

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• In Maz Canata’s castle on Takodana, there are three posters hanging up featuring images of musicians. We’re stumped on the first two, but the poster on the right, reads “Jazz Hallikset” and features a character playing a guitar-like instrument from Naboo called — you guessed it — a hallikset. The hallikset is first seen as a background prop in The Force Awakens, and has since shown up in a handful of expanded universe works, such as Jedi: Fallen Order. (The instrument is almost certainly named after the balliset from Frank Herbert’s Dune.) The game makes a rare error here, though — “Jazz” is not a genre of music in the current Star Wars canon. The swingin’ tunes heard in places like Jabba’s Palace and the Mos Eisley Cantina are more properly (and very unfortunately) categorized as “jizz music.”

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• At the end of The Last Jedi, Chewbacca sits at the wounded Rose Tico’s bedside reading a book. After a moment, he throws that book away and picks up a new one, entitled “Among Clouds.” The cover features a young Lando Calrissian offering a bouquet of flowers to the droid L3-37, referencing their romance subplot from Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• While sneaking through the streets of Kijimi during The Rise of Skywalker, one member of your party will hide under a crate labeled “jogans.” While they never appear in the core films, jogans are a popular fruit introduced in 2008 in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. They’ve been referenced in numerous novels and animated episodes since.

Expanded Universe Deep Cuts

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

The Skywalker Saga’s roster is incredibly deep, with 384 playable minifigs available to unlock at launch, including background characters like Willrow Hood (a.k.a. Ice Cream Maker Guy) and every single astromech shot off the hull of Queen Amidala’s ship during the escape from Naboo. Since the game is already pretty crowded with obscure references to all nine numbered episodes, this doesn’t leave much room for nods to the wider expanded universe from the comics, novels, TV shows, and video games — but we’ve cataloged as many as we could find:

• Mama the Hutt, mother of the infamous Jabba Desilijic Tiure, is a quest giver who hires the player to capture and retrieve the lounge singer Sy Snootles. Mama first appeared in “Hunt for Ziro,” a 2010 episode of The Clone Wars. In The Skywalker Saga, Mama is seeking revenge for the death of her son (Ziro), whom Snootles murdered in that very same Clone Wars episode. Mama becomes available in the character store after completing her side mission, “Silencing Snootles.”
• Mister Bones, a modified B1 battle droid rebuilt by a young Temmin “Snap” Wexley in Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath novel trilogy, is a playable character. Bones is gleefully violent, but also fiercely protective of Snap and his allies. You can unlock Mister Bones as a playable character by entering the code “BAC1CKP” in the Extras menu.
• “Rebel Friend,” a trooper dressed like all the other non-descript helmeted Rebel officers in the opening of A New Hope, except for his bright red shirt, originates in the 2006 Traveller’s Tales game LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. “Rebel Friend” becomes available in the character store after completing “The Healing Power of Crystals” side-mission on Hoth.
• Roger (or RO-GR) is a friendly, modified B1 battle droid who is original to the animated series LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures. Roger becomes available in the character store after completing “A Search for Knowledge,” a side-mission on Naboo.
• The penultimate boss battle of Attack of the Clones pits your party — consisting of Mace Windu, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Kit Fisto — against Jango Fett. In frustration, Fett calls his opponents “Jedi dogs,” to which Fisto replies that, since his planet has no dogs, it would be a more fitting insult to call him a “wooriid.” Wooriids are beasts from Fisto’s as-yet-unseen home planet of Glee Anselm.
• One civilian in Mos Eisley (who you’ll encounter either during A New Hope or Free Play mode) expresses concern about two locals, Ponda Baba and Doctor Evazan. These are the two tough guys who pick a fight with Luke at the Cantina in A New Hope, which ends when Obi-Wan slices off Baba’s hand. The game’s unnamed civilian remarks, “Man, that Doctor Evazan is a real kook! Can’t believe Ponda let him try and fix his arm. I knew it wouldn’t work. Evazan ain’t fixing anything on his own.” According to the 2016 edition of Star Wars Character Encyclopedia, Dr. Evazan does indeed attempt to reattach Baba’s arm himself, and it doesn’t go well. Their subsequent appearances in the Doctor Aphra comics see Evazan try again with a prosthetic arm, but that doesn’t really work, either.
• During the Death Star infiltration mission in A New Hope, an Imperial Officer rants to his troops over the intercom about the inconvenience of the Rebel incursion on the detention level. Among his complaints: the emergency is keeping him from visiting the Hard Heart Cantina. The Hard Heart is a bar aboard the Death Star which first appears in the 2007 novel Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry.

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• The role of Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi is played by not one but three LEGO minifigs, each with a different vibrant hair color. This might be a reference to Holdo’s habit of changing her hair color in the expanded universe.
• While walking the hallways of the First Order Star Destroyer early in The Force Awakens, two Stormtroopers discuss a recent mission to Benathy in which Kylo Ren dove into the mouth of a Zillo Beast. These events are depicted in the 2019 comics one-shot Age of Resistance: Kylo Ren by Tom Taylor and Leonard Kirk.
• During that same mission, Poe Dameron must disguise himself in the uniform of a First Order officer. After changing outfits, he says, “If my mother could see me now …” Though never mentioned in the films, Poe’s mother is Lt. Shara Bey, a Rebel A-Wing pilot who first appears in the 2015 comics series Shattered Empire and is now a regular presence in the pages of the core Star Wars comics title.
• When Rey first sits at the helm of the Millennium Falcon in The Force Awakens, she can be seen reading the ship’s Haynes Owner’s Workshop Manual, an actual book which was published by the makers of real-life automotive technical guides in 2011.
• At the Festival of Ancestors on Pasaana in The Rise of Skywalker, one tourist says that the event is one of the weirdest collections of folks he’s ever seen, “and [he] witnessed the Ewok-Dulok wars!” The Ewok-Dulok wars were the subject of the animated series Ewoks, which aired on ABC in 1985 and 1986.

Behind-the-Scenes

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

The Skywalker Saga also includes a few inside jokes about the behind-the-scenes history of the Star Wars franchise, movies that inspired the space opera, and pop-cultural spoofs:

• When we first cut to R2-D2 and C-3PO on Tatooine early in Return of the Jedi, there are two skeletons sitting on a cliff next to a banner that reads “Hidden Fortress” in Aurebesh. This is a reference to the 1958 Akira Kurosawa film The Hidden Fortress, one of the major influences on Star Wars. George Lucas originally patterned Artoo and Threepio after Hidden Fortress characters Tahei and Matashichi — that’s probably their bones up on the hill.
• In Mos Eisley, there’s a side-mission, “Ma Klounkey Most Foul,” in which Stormtroopers ask you to interrogate witnesses to the Han Solo/Greedo shootout and determine which of the two scoundrels fired their weapons first. This refers to the way that this scene has been re-edited to alter the events of the shoot-out nearly every single time that A New Hope has been re-released. When A New Hope first arrived on Disney+ in 2019, the scene was changed yet again so that Greedo says the Huttese phrase “Ma klounkey!” to Solo just before he fires. It immediately became a meme.
• The side-mission to track down Malakili, Jabba’s runaway rancor trainer, is entitled “Green Harvest.” “Blue Harvest” was the secret production codename for Return of the Jedi.
• While infiltrating the Star Destroyer in The Rise of Skywalker, Rey has to mind trick a Stormtrooper to open a door. Poe wonders aloud, “Can she do that to us?” In Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connelly’s discarded Episode IX script, Duel of the Fates, Rey does exactly that, using her powers to force Poe to leave her behind so that she can complete her dangerous final mission alone.

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

• During the final duel on Exegol in The Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine exclaims “Rey. Pah! I wanted them to call you ‘Kira.’ Sounds so much cooler.” Kira is the name of Rey’s closest counterpart in George Lucas’ unused outline for Star Wars: Episode VII.
• In the Southeast corner of Lake Paonga on Naboo, and you’ll find what appears to be a copy of the original LEGO Star Wars video game floating in a box on the water. (You can’t pick it up, unfortunately.)
• In the middle of the chase through the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back, there’s a gag in which we can see the Millennium Falcon from above as it spins around, firing projectiles in all directions, like in the classic arcade game Asteroids.
• After the boss battle against First Order Stormtrooper FN-2199 in The Force Awakens, the trooper gets back up and attempts to dazzle Finn and Han Solo by waving his shock baton around theatrically. Solo responds with a shrug and lazily aims his pistol back at the trooper. This scene is staged to echo the famous gag from Raiders of the Lost Ark in which Indiana Jones (also co-created by George Lucas and played by Harrison Ford) brings a gun to a swordfight.

Clairvoyant Call-Forwards

Image: TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

The Skywalker Saga also offers its storytellers the opportunity to add jokes to the original trilogy that call forward to stories that were created much later:

• While installing the Falcon’s sensor dish at Docking Bay 94 in A New Hope, Han remarks, “Do you know how hard it is to find a round dish? Quit shooting it!” After the Falcon’s round sensor dish is lost during the Battle of Endor, it’s replaced with the rectangular one seen in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
• In The Empire Strikes Back, during the mission to reconfigure the signal towers to boost the missing Luke’s signal, Han asks General Rieekan why the Rebels haven’t thawed out the bridges to the third tower yet. Rieekan replies: “In his climate? That’d be about as fruitful as herding rathtars.” That’s exactly what Han and Chewie are up to at the beginning of The Force Awakens.
• When Lando Calrissian comes to greet the crew of the Millennium Falcon at Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, a wig falls onto C-3PO’s head. Instead of coming on to Leia (as Calrissian did in the film), Lando delivers the same flirtatious dialogue to C-3PO, again alluding to his romantic relationship with L3-37 in Solo.

Final Reward

These are the highlights we’ve discovered after one playthrough of the full story mode, and completing a mere 36% of the game’s puzzles and mini-games. We’ve yet to experience it ourselves, but a Rebel trooper on Yavin 4 teases that there’s a special reward awaiting players who reach 100% game completion. Once you’ve collected everything there is to collect in The Skywalker Saga, make your way to the throne room near the top of the Temple on Yavin 4 (where Luke and Han receive their medals at the end of A New Hope). There, you’ll find the main cast of the series standing around a single switch giving you a round of applause. Throw the switch, and enjoy a dance remix of the saga’s musical themes and an endless fountain of studs to spend on … well, nothing. You’ve already bought everything.