“Why Is This Person Laughing?” The Killer’s Aliases Easter Eggs Explained By Writer

The Killer screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker explains the film’s aliases Easter eggs. Directed by David Fincher, The Killer has been a major hit for Netflix, leading the viewership charts since its release last week. The film stars Michael Fassbender as a nameless assassin, but he uses many aliases throughout the film, all of which are the names of characters from old sitcoms.

Now, in a recent interview with EW, Walker addresses the many sitcom character aliases of Fassbender’s Killer, which include Oscar Madison (The Odd Couple) and Archibald Bunker (All in the Family). Walker explains that, upon realizing that the assassin would have to use a fake name at various points to identify himself, he decided that he “didn’t want it to be the same name, because, even if that’s his alias, it becomes his name. So it just made sense to shuffle the deck of names we used every time.” Check out Walker’s full comment about the aliases below:

“Fincher, to his credit, and in his genius, made sure to really hit them. In my draft, they were just spoken last names; in the movie, he really makes sure you see and hear not just last names but full names. It’s one of my favorite notions about this film that there’ll be some 20-year-olds sitting beside some 50-year-olds, [and] the 20-year-old is wondering, ‘why in the hell is this person laughing every 10 or 15 minutes?'”

Should We Have Learned More About The Killer?

Why Michael Fassbender’s Assassin Is Better Left A Mystery

From his first moments on screen, audiences learn that Fassbender’s hitman has excelled and survived in his business because he operates by a strict set of guiding principles. The Killer‘s cold and detached inner monologue paints the character as almost in-human in his approach to his job and his lifestyle. Over the course of the film, this facade slowly fades and, despite repeated mantas about avoiding empathy, it becomes clear that this character is no longer living by his own rules. The voice-over, in essence, becomes that of an unreliable narrator.

Part of why The Killer‘s story is so effective is because it is told almost entirely from Fassbender’s character’s point of view. There are no scenes that deeply explore his personal life other than the reveal that he has a girlfriend, and this mystery is part of what makes the film such a fascinating character study. His singular mission and running internal monologue (and the contrasts between these two elements) tell you everything you need to know, and anything else isn’t really needed.

Of course, it should be acknowledged this approach hasn’t worked for everybody. Despite The Killer‘s impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 86%, a common thread in the criticism is that this lean, calculating approach means that there’s not really an emotional through line to be grasped. Your mileage may vary, then, regarding whether The Killer‘s many mysteries are best left unexplored, but it’s clear from the film’s streaming popularity that, at the very least, the film serves as an interesting portrait of a truly unique individual.