Evil Dead: The Game releases on May 13, and its arrival has reminded fans just how influential the series is. Everything from Bruce Campbell's boom-stick monologue to the classic one-liner, "hail to the king, baby,” is referenced throughout pop culture, with Duke Nukem himself famously quoting the latter phrase. But even within the Evil Dead series there are references to other media. Many viewers may be unfamiliar with the various products and places that Ash Williams and his friends mention. That is, many viewers from outside of Michigan may be unfamiliar with these references, but there’s a good reason they’re there.
Sam Raimi, the creator of the series, was actually born and raised in Royal Oak, Michigan, a sizable suburb north of Detroit. Because the first Evil Dead movie was an indie production, Raimi looked no further than his own circle of friends and family for its casting. It's a good thing he did because this was why he asked childhood friend Bruce Campbell to play the series' protagonist. It really is no wonder why so much of Michigan's culture has seeped into the franchise in one way or another.
Michigan State University in Evil Dead
The most explicit reference to Michigan comes from the original film, Evil Dead, which was released in 1981. In it, a cast of college students take a trip to a remote cabin and unknowingly awaken demonic spirits by reading from an ancient, evil text known as the Necronomicon. These four characters are all students from Michigan State University, one of Michigan's biggest colleges. Located within Lansing, the capital of Michigan, Michigan State is perhaps best known for its D1 athletics and its vicious rivalry with the University of Michigan, which is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Families in Michigan usually identify with one school or the other, so this may explain why Sam Raimi attended Michigan State for three years instead of the University of Michigan despite the latter's closer proximity to Royal Oak.
Evil Dead and Raimi’s Oldsmobile
Sam Raimi pays homage to Michigan in other ways, too. Most will know Detroit for its reputation as "The Motor City", and General Motors has done much to build this reputation. General Motors is one of the world's largest automobile manufacturers, and when it filed for bankruptcy in 2009, it made front-page news around the world. The automotive manufacturer is the owner of many famous brands, however. One of Raimi's signatures as a filmmaker is to sneak in a car from one of these brands: the 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88. This car appears throughout the Evil Dead series and is Ash Williams' primary mode of transportation.
Ash Williams’ Grand Rapids Boom-stick
In the franchise's third film, Evil Dead: Army of Darkness, Ash Williams is sent back in time to the medieval ages. It’s there that he’s immediately labeled an outsider and attempts to defend himself by brandishing his so-called "boom-stick". He then launches into a monologue about the gun and its features, mentioning it was made in a Remington factory in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Unlike Ash Williams’ fictional hometown of Elk Grove, Grand Rapids is a very real, up-and-coming city in West Michigan. There's no concrete record of there ever being a Remington factory there, but Grand Rapids was a major producer of M1 Garand rifles during World War 2.
Sam Raimi's films have a style that is unmistakably his. From whip-pans to other unpredictable camera movements, his absurd, sometimes campy films are hard not to love. His insistence on including references to Michigan is unsurprisingly a source of pride for residents of the mitten state; whereas there are plenty of films, TV shows, and video games that reference the likes of L.A. and New York City, far fewer show love for Michigan. It's likely these sorts of callouts will also appear in the Evil Dead: The Game, but it'll be interesting to see in what ways they’re incorporated.
Evil Dead: The Game is set to release May 13 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.