Great job, Internet!: Wake Up, Dead Man, Rian Johnson just Rickrolled us

It brings us no joy to report that we’ve been Rickrolled. All of us. One of the internet’s oldest and most revered pranks was pulled on an unsuspecting public and performed so slyly that it took nearly a month for Netflix subscribers to catch on. And there it was, staring at us from its algorithmic perch, practically served to us on a silver platter as we blew past it like Inspector Clouseau. Thankfully, there are some Sherlocks in on Bluesky users, and now, we know the truth: Wake Up Dead Man was a god damn Rickroll. All it took was someone noticing the windows of Father Jud’s seminary gym, and the rest fell into place. It’s so dumb, it’s brilliant.

Yesterday, Bluesky user @jayhulmepoet posted, “Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it’s really important you know that the scene in the Seminary’s Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.” The gumshoe poster showed his work, uploading screenshots from Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” video, and the tracery appeared a match. That’s when Rian Johnson confirmed that humiliating truth: The director had Rickrolled us, and his cast, crew, and viewers barely cared.

“This is true,” Rian Johnson captioned the post, “and I was the only one on set excited about it (and playing the song on my phone to blank stares).”