Universal Studios Florida recently opened their summer Tribute Store with incredibly detailed rooms themed to classic movies like E.T., Jaws and Back to the Future. If you haven’t checked it out yet, we have a full photo and video tour here.
As expected, the Tribute Store is loaded with easter eggs from all of the movies and the history of the parks. One easter egg in particular caught my eye though and it ties into Halloween Horror Nights.
After the final room of the store, guests make their way down a short hallway that leads to the exit of the store. And while there are some obvious references to Halloween Horror Nights in the form of movie posters that were found in the 2018 house Slaughter Sinema, at the end of the hall, the one that really caught my eye was in the case on the wall before that.
There is a large cork board behind glass in this hallway, loaded with references to the movies and the overall movie theater motif that this store follows. At the bottom right of this board, you can find a newspaper clipping with the headline “LOCAL PRIVATE EYE MISSING.”
The clipping reports that police responded to emergency calls regarding monsters and other supernatural things. It even includes a photo of a familiar office. It also blames a potential “evil secret society” and goes on to say that the noises of these monsters stopped once the morning broke and first responders investigated.
So what does this mean? Well, the photo from the newspaper features an office building that can actually be found elsewhere in Universal Studios Florida. And that office belongs to Boris Shuster.
Shuster’s office can be found in the New York area of the park, across from Transformers: The Ride-3D. Shuster has a long history in HHN lore, establishing an organization called Legendary Truth all the way back in 2008. Legendary Truth has popped up multiple times in various HHN events and was most recently featured just last year in the house Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth.
That house invited guests to explore the files of Shuster’s previous investigations, which of course meant actually stepping into his horrifying stories. The house ended with those stories coming back to haunt everyone involved, Shuster included. The private eye appeared to meet a grim fate in the finale of the house, which was of course set in the very office you see above.
So, this newspaper clipping appears to be telling the story of the aftermath of this 2021 Halloween Horror Nights house. There was certainly a whole lot of noise created by the monsters and other supernatural things found in that house, so naturally the police would respond. But is Boris Shuster really gone? Or is this newspaper teasing another step in the Legendary Truth story sometime in the future of Halloween Horror Nights? We’ll just have to wait to find out.