Blade II Easter eggs: why were the Reapers modeled on leeches?

Blade II is a beloved, bloody sequel, and it's full of Easter eggs, hidden details and making of stories. It's the Blade movie where the vampire hunters and the hunter vampires become the hunted. Guillermo del Toro does an absolutely phenomenal job directing it.

Blade II (2002) stars Wesley Snipes as Blade, Kris Kristofferson as Whistler and Ron Perlman as Reinhardt. Here's what I found inside it, from the design of its monsters to the clues that give away a traitor long before the ending.

Guillermo del Toro Agreed to Blade II Only If He Could Make It Scarier

Blade II was written by David Goyer, returning after writing the first Blade. He wrote it specifically with Guillermo del Toro's directorial vision in mind. Goyer had wanted del Toro for the first film, because he was a huge fan of del Toro's early work. That especially meant his 1993 directorial debut, the vampire film Cronos, and his 1997 film Mimic.

Del Toro only agreed to direct Blade II on one very specific condition: he had to be allowed to make it even scarier than the first. Making creepy movies was one of his favorite things to do. You can see that in the design of the Reapers, because these things are "certified nightmare fuel." That's why del Toro opens the movie with a scene that shows how disturbing his new creation is.

The opening shot establishes Prague in the Czech Republic, which was the film's main shooting location. Shooting there worked out well for the production. They could take advantage of the region's Gothic architecture, and they were also able to buy a couple of abandoned factories at a very good price.

The Reapers Were Modeled on Leeches, and Morbius Was the Original Plan

When the film opens, Jared Nomak attacks one of the vampire nation's blood banks. Del Toro made sure to gross out as many people as possible here. Nomak opens his head up like a hot dog so he can feed on smug vampires who were taking advantage of the homeless. I truly love this opening, because you can see right away that the Blade universe has introduced a new and far more intense kind of vampire.

Del Toro has said he purposely modeled the Reapers after leeches, because leeches are all about one thing: finding a blood source to feed on. In his opinion, vampires in popular media had become too much like humans by that point. Many fictional vampires were filled with romance and human emotion, instead of being shown as bloodthirsty humanoid monsters with an animal drive to hunt and consume.

Del Toro liked that real leeches never evolved into attractive beings obsessed with finding a mate. They're one track minded, focused on finding the nearest warm body to feed on. So he made the Reapers as disgusting as possible, both on the outside and in their biology on the inside, as we see later in the Reaper autopsy scene.

As I mentioned in my breakdown of the first film, Morbius was the character the writers of Blade wanted as the sequel's main villain. The rights to Morbius belonged to Sony, though, so New Line Cinema couldn't use him. They went with Jared Nomak instead.

Whistler's Family and the Matador Motorcycle Chase

The opening credits include a flashback to Blade's birth from the start of the first film, with a very brief appearance by Blade's mother, Vanessa Brooks. As Blade introduces Whistler, there's a quick flash of what looks like a police report. It describes an incident at 7:00 at a family home in Washington, DC, and the names at the top read Whistler, Susanna, Sarah, Becky.

Those are very likely Whistler's wife and two daughters, Susanna, Sarah and Becky Whistler. The first movie told us all three died in a vampire attack, which is what pushed Whistler into a life of vampire hunting in their name.

The action then kicks off with Blade chasing vampires who try to escape on red and black motorcycles. Red and black are the favorite colors of vampires, because of their links to blood and the darkness of night. We also get a display of Blade's superior half vampire genome when he jumps from the very top of a building to cut the vampires off. Blade is completely computer generated for that jump.

After that, Blade uses his black and red jacket to taunt and dodge his attackers, the way Spanish matadors use red capes with bulls. I love that when Blade wrecks one red motorcycle, a winking cow is painted on the wall behind him to underline the matador theme. The wall advertises a milk brand that seems to be called Tasty Moo, made at the Tasty Moo creamery. That creamery was a front for the vampires holding and torturing Whistler. Boxes of its milk sit beside the vampire goons doing drugs in the next scene, right before Blade kills them all to rescue his mentor.

Scud's Hellboy Shirt Shows He's a Big Comic Book Fan

Back at the hideout, Scud references Frank Miller's 1986 Batman comic The Dark Knight Returns while listening to "Gorillaz on My Mind" by Gorillaz and Redman. Scud is clearly a big fan of comic books and superheroes. Later on he wears a Hellboy shirt with the BPRD logo, which stands for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense from the Hellboy comics. Del Toro was a big Hellboy fan, and he proved it with his very next movie after Blade II, Hellboy (2004), also starring Ron Perlman. After Pan's Labyrinth, he also directed Hellboy II in 2008.

Scud's name may also reference the comic series Scud the Disposable Assassin. It's set in a future society where anyone can buy a robot assassin from a vending machine, and the robots self destruct once their target is dead. Scud is one of those robots. He gains his own autonomy by keeping his target alive in a hospital, which holds off his self destruct programming, and he becomes a mercenary for hire. If that's the inspiration, I think it's very fitting, since the vampires see their familiars as disposable humans.

Scud ends up being scum, but he's "a scummy Scud with good taste." He has The Powerpuff Girls on several times in the film: in the garage when he first meets Whistler, during van surveillance while the others go to the vampire nightclub, and while he and Whistler build their light bomb. The episodes used are season 2, episode 8, Down 'n' Dirty; season 1, episode 18, Bubblevicious; and season 3, episode 2, The Mane Event.

In Down 'n' Dirty, the episode on when Scud meets Whistler, Buttercup stinks up all of Townsville with her body odor because she refuses to take a bath with her sisters. Buttercup is usually the character on screen when Scud has the show on. That makes sense when Blade later insults Scud for not wanting to help with the autopsy, possibly implying and foreshadowing that Blade could smell Scud's stench from a mile away. I also love that Whistler calls him "skid" when they first talk, which further foreshadows his rotten nature as a vampire familiar.

Blade's Missile Factory Base and the Vampire Ninjas

Blade's headquarters in this movie used to be a factory that made missiles for the Soviets. The film crew decided to turn this old weapons facility into a vampire weapons facility for Blade, which I think was a great choice.

That base is soon infiltrated by Asad and Nyssa in vampire ninja outfits that del Toro designed himself, heavily inspired by anime. Del Toro has always been a huge fan of Japanese anime, and he has gone on record saying the action in anime very much inspired the action sequences in Blade II.

This infiltration scene also gives slight hints about Scud's loyalty to the vampires. First, Scud licks the blood off his finger after Whistler hits him in the face with a gun. Second, Scud compliments Nyssa and Asad's suits in a "please don't shoot me, we're on the same side" way. Scud probably even designed those suits for them.

Caliban Industries and the Blood Pack's Hidden Meanings

Nyssa and Asad take Blade to Damaskinos's headquarters at Caliban Industries. The name references Caliban, the half human, half monster character from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. That fits, since Caliban Industries was secretly creating half vampire, half monster hybrids through Damaskinos's attempts to perfect the vampire genome. The symbol on the helicopter landing pad even appears to be a double helix, foreshadowing those experiments.

Asad then introduces Blade to his team of elite vampire warriors, the Bloodpack, a clever play on the medical blood packs used to store extracted blood. After Daz Crawford's Lighthammer comes his girlfriend Verlaine. That role was originally supposed to be played by Traci Lords, because Verlaine was first imagined as the twin sister of Raquel, the female vampire from the very beginning of the first film. The character was then reworked and played by Marit Velle Kile.

After Tony Curran's Priest comes Snowman, played by martial arts legend Donnie Yen, who also served as the film's fight choreographer. Del Toro knows a talent when he sees one. Then there's Chupa, played by Matt Schulze. His name means to suck in Spanish, based on the Spanish word chupar, so it's a good thing he's a vampire.

Reinhardt's Blush Line Came From Something Said to Wesley Snipes

Finally there's Reinhardt, played by Ron Perlman, who has made a number of projects with del Toro. The most notable are the first two Hellboy movies, where he played Hellboy. Reinhardt is so cool that he's the only character who never takes off his sunglasses for the entire film.

When Blade and Reinhardt first face off, Reinhardt asks Blade if he can blush. That's a racist comment someone said to Wesley Snipes in real life. Snipes insisted the line be included in Reinhardt's dialogue to help Blade truly despise the character.

The Radu Sign and the House of Pain Nightclub

As the Bloodpack does a slow motion walk to the club, a giant neon sign reading Radu sits behind them. Radu the Handsome was a real prince of Wallachia and the brother of Vlad the Impaler, who was born Vlad Dracula. Vlad the Impaler is said to have inspired Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. Putting the name of Vlad's brother behind Nyssa and her team could have been the film's way of teasing that Nyssa's own brother is the main threat.

That sign flickers red and blue, and that's very likely symbolic of the team up between the warm blooded Daywalker and the cold blooded Bloodpack. A few moments later, when Whistler looks at the group through his thermal scope, Blade is the only body glowing red, because he's the only warm blooded vampire there. The rest of the Bloodpack shows up a cool blue.

The House of Pain nightclub scene that follows had around 400 extras in that one room. Del Toro was a little nervous about managing so many people, but he ended up loving the experience, because all 400 were fun and hardworking. They danced for so long, though, that the room quickly started to smell strongly of body odor, and the director wished the production had added 400 deodorant sticks to the budget.

Red Suns, Racist Vampires and Michael Jackson's Lost Cameo

Inside the club, Blade is disgusted by what the young vampires are doing, like kissing with razor blades in their mouths and cutting up their own backs for fun. I guess that's the point of a club called the House of Pain. To underline the theme, the stage backdrop is a giant red sun, the ultimate source of pain for the vampire nation. In Marvel Comics, red suns are one of Blade's main weaknesses, much like they are for Superman in DC Comics. In 2019's Avengers #27, Blade gets his energy drained as the Avengers fly near a series of red suns in outer space.

As Priest walks through the crowd, he's disgusted that many clubbing vampires aren't pure blooded like his team. That shows how racist Damaskinos's squad has been raised to be. It makes sense, because del Toro deliberately made Damaskinos a racist, fascist vampire who valued only the genetically pure, which is why he cast out his own son once his experiments poisoned Nomak's DNA.

When Nyssa heads upstairs to look for Reapers, what she doesn't find is Michael Jackson. He was originally supposed to make a quick cameo as a vampire handling human remains, but for unknown reasons he couldn't make it. They shot the moment with another actor and then scrapped it entirely as a deleted scene.

Robotic Reapers, a Doctor Strange Easter Egg and a Daredevil Nod

When the Reapers attack the club, Lighthammer tries to get a resurrected Reaper off him. That Reaper was a mix of practical and computer generated effects, and some shots used a completely robotic Reaper. Del Toro didn't like over relying on CGI, so he had the design team build the upper torso of a Reaper as a moving robot with realistic skin. That way audiences wouldn't get the uncanny valley feeling that came with much of the CG from that era.

During Blade and Nomak's fight in the church, what appears to be the closed golden Eye of Agamotto from Doctor Strange can be seen behind Nomak. It's designed the way it used to look in Marvel Comics before the MCU's influence.

After the church scene, we ironically have to see a priest die, as Priest begs Chupa to kill him so he won't become a Reaper. Chupa mutters "a man without fear" as he shoots his comrade, which definitely feels like a reference to Marvel's Man Without Fear, Daredevil.

A Blinding Autopsy Scene and Prague Sewer Tunnels Built by Hand

Whistler then finds a dying Reaper, and the Bloodpack takes it to be cut open and examined. Apparently around 30 members of the film crew were temporarily blinded by the UV lights used in this scene.

As the team prepares for the underground assault, Blade quotes Sun Tzu, telling Whistler he intends to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. Del Toro symbolically places Scud right behind Blade in the frame, since Scud turns out to have been Blade's enemy in disguise the whole time.

The Bloodpack then heads into the sewers of Prague to lure in and destroy Reapers. All of those tunnels were built by hand by the set designers in Prague, and together they were as long as a football field. That blows my mind, because I never would have guessed it. It feels like a real location I could visit if I chose to live my life as a Ninja Turtle in Prague.

Damaskinos's Lair, the Astronomical Clock and Nosferatu

What I could guess was that these vampires would betray Blade the first chance they got. Blade predicts it earlier in the film, and it comes true when Reinhardt and Damaskinos's goons knock him out and take him back to Damaskinos's lair at Caliban Industries. The interior of that lair was designed by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, more proof that del Toro was all about Hellboy. Comic artist Tim Bradstreet was also heavily involved in making concept art.

The huge clock in the lair, seen when Blade first arrives, is based on Prague's famous astronomical clock, which has been around since 1410. I have a strong feeling Damaskinos himself is probably at least as old as that clock. Besides telling time, it tracks the positions of the sun and moon, which a vampire very much needs to know at all times.

Damaskinos's look, especially his pale skin and bald head, was heavily based on the vampire from Nosferatu, the 1922 German adaptation of the Dracula tale. When his human familiar Kounen puts Blade on a slab so the vampires can drain his blood, much like in the first film, Blade has a number of new tattoos. Wesley Snipes revealed that Blade gets a new tattoo after a particularly memorable vampire hunting adventure, because each tattoo tells a story.

Kounen's Dubbed Voice and Blade's Final Stop at Effingham Palace

A strange fact about Kounen: Karel Roden, who played him, had all of his lines dubbed over by a British actor in post production. Apparently his Czech accent was so thick that audiences found it a bit too much for the movie.

At the very end, Blade ties up a loose end by killing Rush, the vampire from the very start of the film. He finds him in London, inside an adult parody of Buckingham Palace called Effingham Palace. Rush is played by Santiago Segura, who went on to work with del Toro on a number of films, including both Hellboy movies and the first Pacific Rim.