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Stranger Things season 3 will have some fun with 1985's Fletch

Star David Harbour says the Chevy Chase action comedy will have a surprising influence on events in Hawkins.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read
Child stars of "Stranger Things 2" look into the camera

Stranger Things will reference another popular 1980s movie when it returns in 2019.

Netflix

Yet another 1980s movie will make an appearance in Stranger Things season 3. Get ready for a nod to Chevy Chase's 1985 film Fletch, the movie the actor once called his "favorite."

"The Duffers are so specific each year with the movies," actor David Harbour, who plays police chief Jim Hopper, told Variety. "And Fletch is one movie we get to play around and have some fun with this season, which you wouldn't expect from Stranger Things and you wouldn't expect from the Spielberg universe and you certainly wouldn't expect from a darker season."

In the movie, Chase plays a reporter who keeps taking on new identities as he investigates a murder plot. Chase told Entertainment Weekly in 2004 that the film was his favorite thanks to all the comedy improv it allowed him to do.

"It's my favorite, because if anything represented my comic ability and was closest to what I'm really like, that movie is it," Chase told EW.

Harbour didn't reveal details on how Fletch's plot will be reflected in the show, but there's now a reporter in the cast who could be involved. Jake Busey is playing a new character named Bruce, described by Netflix as "a journalist for The Hawkins Post with questionable morals and a sick sense of humor."

It's far from the first 1980s movie to play a role in the Netflix drama. In March, executive producer Shawn Levy said that another 1985 hit, Michael J. Fox's Back to the Future, would also be important in season 3. And the young stars dressed as Ghostbusters, from the 1984 film, during season 2.

Stranger Things will return to Netflix in 2019.

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