How 'The Cloverfield Paradox' Connects With The Other 'Cloverfield' Movies

Paramount and Netflix surprised the world when they released The Cloverfield Paradox immediately after the Super Bowl last night. Now that we've seen the movie, what Cloverfield Paradox connections are lurking in the film that link it to the rest of the Clover-verse? Let's find out.

24 hours ago, we didn't even know the title of this movie, let alone when we'd see a trailer. Today, many of us have already watched the completed final product. It was a bold and surprising move in an industry that increasingly avoids doing anything bold or surprising, and that's worthy of praise. Now, let's explore how The Cloverfield Paradox connects to the other movies.

The alien in the original movie, affectionally nicknamed "Clover," might not be the same creature that pops up briefly in The Cloverfield Paradox, but it's certainly the same species. Just before Michael Hamilton (Roger Davies) finds Molly (Clover Nee) in the rubble of a destroyed building, he sees a huge creature stepping away in the shadows in the top left of this frame. It has the same distinct walk as the creature from the 2008 movie:

It's almost impossible to detect in a screenshot, but if you watch the movie, you can see the creature move through the smoke.

The film's final moments make the connection even more explicit when a giant creature with a very familiar head bursts above the cloud line to roar just before the movie cuts to black:

Here's my question: is this version of Clover actually much larger than the one first seen in 2008's Cloverfield? This creature emerges in the foreground after the space capsule falls through the clouds in the deep distance, which implies that this thing is huge. But without any buildings or landmarks around, it's impossible to tell if this is a larger version of Clover than the one we've already seen.

The Cloverfield Paradox opens with Ava Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her husband Michael in a long line at a gas station called Kelvin. Like Slusho!, Kelvin has a long history of popping up in J.J. Abrams projects. Kelvin was Abrams' grandfather's name, and there are shout-outs in nearly every Abrams film and TV show he's produced. In terms of the Clover-verse, we saw it when 10 Cloverfield Lane protagonist Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) filled up her car in the beginning of that movie:

Kelvin also appears briefly on the hatch that Commander Kiel tries to open near the end of The Cloverfield Paradox, as you can see here:

It's unclear if that mention of Kelvin is a result of blending the two space stations thanks to the particle accelerator. Maybe in Earth 2, the Kelvin company deals with space station manufacturing instead of selling gasoline.

Tagruato is the fictional parent company of both Slusho! and Bold Futura, the subsidiary where Howard Stambler worked before he went into his bunker in 10 Cloverfield Lane. (There's also a bunker scenario in The Cloverfield Paradox, though it's not nearly as disturbing or creepy.) The name pops up briefly on an electrical panel in The Cloverfield Paradox.

Some have assumed the escape pod that falls through the clouds at the end of this movie is the same thing that eagle-eyed fans spotted falling into the water during the very end of the original Cloverfield. This is not the case. Cloverfield takes place years before The Cloverfield Paradox, so the two are unrelated. Additionally, bonus materials and ARG campaigns have proven that it was a Japanese satellite that was seen falling through the sky.