When Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in 2016, it didn’t hold back on the creepy. It had all the suitable ingredients for a retro-sci-fi thriller. But offscreen, things were just as deranged. The Duffer Brothers pulled off a prank so realistic it could’ve been lifted straight from the Upside Down.
Using a hyper-detailed dummy of Noah Schnapp’s character, Will Byers, the creators managed to freak out someone very near the actor. It’s none aside from Schnapp’s own mom. And the story only gets more hilarious from here.
Stranger Things Creators Prank Noah Schnapp’s Mom Brutally
The story dates back to Season 1, when Stranger Things was just making waves for its eerie storytelling and ‘80s throwbacks. The storyline centered across the disappearance of Will Byers, who’s abducted by a monster and dragged into an alternate dimension often called the Upside Down.
40 years ago today, Will Byers disappeared within the ‘Stranger Things’ universe. pic.twitter.com/LSAPAY97N9
— Pop Base (@PopBase) November 6, 2023
In episode 3, titled Holly Jolly, paramedics drag Will’s body out of the quarry, fully wearing his last-seen outfit. It’s an emotional gut-punch, particularly for his tight-knit group of friends. But viewers soon learn that Joyce Byers, Will’s mom, isn’t buying it.
Fast forward to episode 4, The Body, where Joyce storms into the morgue, stares down the corpse, and calls it out as a fake. She checks for a birthmark and confirms her gut feeling, it’s not Will. Everyone round her thinks she’s spiraling.
But her suspicion is eventually validated when Chief Hopper does his own investigating. He slices the body open, only to search out it filled with cotton, like a department store mannequin. That fake body, disturbingly detailed and hauntingly accurate, was the identical one the Duffer Brothers decided to repurpose for a bit mischief.
“We immediately took Noah’s mom aside, told her we had something to point out her, and led her right into a dark closet where we had propped up this frighteningly realistic corpse of her son,” Ross and Matt Duffer recalled during an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “She was startled at first, and we felt like perhaps we crossed a line… But after the initial shock, she loved it. Before
long, she was taking pictures along with her child’s fake corpse and texting the photos to all her friends. Yeah, Noah has a fairly cool mom.”
The Duffer Brothers will return to Netflix after ‘Stranger Things 5’ for his or her latest series ‘SOMETHING VERY BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN.’
It can be a brand new horror series pic.twitter.com/TkHM98rmCp
— Stranger Things Updates (@Updates_SThings) July 16, 2024
It’s not exactly every parent’s dream to bump into a reproduction of their kid’s dead body in a dark closet, but Schnapp’s mom took the moment like a champ. That’s probably probably the most Hawkins-energy thing ever. As for fans wondering when to return to Hawkins, Season 5 is ready to return this November after an extended break. Until then, episodes 1 through 4 are on Netflix to binge!
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