An eagle-eyed Star Wars fan noticed a surprising similarity between stormtrooper and clone weapons, and there’s a practical reason behind it.
Highlights
Star Wars fans recently discovered that the stormtrooper's E-11 blaster rifle and the clone trooper's DC-15 rifle share a hidden detail.
The DC-15's front is an unmodified, upside-down E-11, which went unnoticed by countless fans for years.
The prop designers repurposed leftover stormtrooper weapons to create the clone troopers' rifles, as confirmed in a behind-the-scenes featurette.
A particularly observant Star Wars fan picked out a fascinating little Easter egg in the weaponry used by the Galactic Empire's stormtroopers and their predecessors, the Galactic Republic's clone troopers. Both share a detail that's flown right under the radar of countless fans for years now.
The Star Wars universe is nothing without its callbacks. Thanks to its love of telling stories in any order it darn well pleases, some callbacks end up as call forwards. Those words may be a traumatic flashback for '90s kids who figured out cell phone trickery to bypass their 56k modem's commandeering of their landlines. But in this context, the term often resulted in oddly familiar-looking pieces of tech across the various eras of the Star Wars franchise. It's also where one fan's discovery comes into play.
That's right, this is another story of paragraphs about a Reddit post. But don't worry, it's pretty cool, especially for those with a reliably consistent Star Wars hyperfixation. Reddit user K3psu recently posted on the official Star Wars subreddit pointing out a stormtrooper weapon detail hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the Imperial enforcers' weapon of choice, the E-11 blaster rifle, was almost entirely repurposed in the design of the DC-15 rifle used by the clone army of the Republic.
This discovery caught several other fans off-guard, as they'd been pretty intimately familiar with both weapons through their relatively wide use in the Star Wars franchise. Some of the more seasoned in the fandom might recognize the E-11 from its heavy use in the Dark Forces video games for PC and other platforms. Meanwhile, the DC-15 might strike a chord with those who spent their days getting blasted off the Bespin platforms by wrist rockets in the original Star Wars: Battlefront games. It's a blast from the past for many who have back problems now. However, some fans questioned the practicality of reusing such designs.
"Wow, I've been reading about both of those blasters since I was little and had never once heard about this nor noticed it. Great catch, OP. Although I wouldn't call it unmodified, it looks like an intentional allusion to the E-11 design. Especially since they would be completely CGI in their first appearance, so there would be no need to actually reuse props."
One pointed out that it doesn't make much sense as a "waste not" mantra since the DC-15 was entirely computer-generated (along with the clone troopers themselves) in its initial Attack of the Clones appearance. So it's not like the prop designers would need to repurpose what they had. Except that's precisely what they did. Other users replied with variations on a story that the artists behind the clone troopers would present physical models of the characters and their weapons to Star Wars creator George Lucas during production for approval. It turns out they used leftover stormtrooper weapons and just stuck them together. The fans even uncovered a behind-the-scenes featurette from the 2011 Blu-ray release, confirming that.
"The reason for the reuse happened because they were presenting a physical maquette of a clone trooper to George Lucas, and cut up an E-11 to help make the rifle, even though the final movie one would always be CG (and slightly modified)."
So this not-so-hidden detail has finally been slightly less hidden once again. It's fascinating how even the smallest Easter eggs like this often give way to interesting behind-the-scenes stories. Now, if only these dedicated fans could uncover why Han Solo lived so long despite being such a reckless space gremlin. Oh wait, they already did.
Star Wars is a multimedia franchise created by George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd with the 1977 motion picture. The science fiction franchise follows the adventures of characters (both humanoid and alien) in outer space, including those who can wield a mystical power known as the Force. Since the release of the original trilogy movies, the franchise has expanded to include multiple films and branched out to other mediums like comics, video games, TV shows, theme park attractions, and more. The IP and Lucasfilm were sold to Disney in 2012.
Source: K3psu/Reddit, Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones featurette (via mranderson00001/YouTube)