This Easter Egg Proves That Star Trek And Star Wars Take Place In The Same Universe

Too often in life, people are divided into socially reinforced groups, diametrically opposed to one another on principle. Jets versus Sharks. Montagues versus Capulets. Contemporary versus classical theater nerds. And, for a time, Star Wars fans were often pitted against Star Trek fans. It was a rivalry for the ages. In convention center parking lots across the world, brother fought against brother, as plastic lightsabers met LARP foam bat'leth, and the air filled with Chewbacca Bowcaster Nerf darts being used to combat phaser "pew" noises. 

No more. At last, these two worlds can, perhaps, peacefully coexist. And it's all thanks to the one man about whom neither side has ever had a single snarky thing to say: JJ Abrams.

It turns out that there was a key Easter egg in 2013's Star Trek: Into Darkness. An hour and seventeen minutes into the movie, as the Enterprise is taking fire from the USS Vengeance, a chunk of its hull is blown off, sending crewmen and equipment flying into space... and among the jettisoned debris is none other than acclaimed astromech droid R2-D2.

Yes, R2-D2, pictured blowing blurrily out of frame above, bottom left, exists in Star Trek. So, maybe the Star Wars movies, within the Star Trek timeline, remained culturally impactful even after the Eugenics Wars. Maybe some young Federation engineer was so tickled by the character of R2 that they developed a replica, or even a functioning droid of their own. 

Or maybe Star Trek and Star Wars exist in the same universe. Maybe, through guile and charisma, R2-D2 managed to survive for eons, escaping a galaxy far, far away and eventually securing work on a Starfleet vessel thanks to the organization's open-door, no-questions-asked policy of bringing new allies into the fold. If Star Trek and Star Wars exist in the same universe, what does that mean? It means that they also share a world with Indiana Jones, who, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, passes a hieroglyph featuring the likenesses of C-3PO and R2-D2, implying that the two droids made it to Earth at some point in the distant past. The Indiana Jones franchise relies on the premise of the demonstrable existence of not just the Judaeo-Christian God, but also Kali, Shiva, and Jesus. And since Star Trek's cast of characters comes from a post-theistic society, this means, if nothing else, that Spock's heathen soul is probably condemned to eternal damnation, either in hell or the Hindu underworld of Naraka.

Or maybe it was just a fun reference to a silly robot.