‘Stranger Things’ Star Caleb McLaughlin Snuck In Heartwarming Tribute To Kobe Bryant In S4: Photo

Caleb McLaughlin made a small shout-out to late basketball legend Kobe Bryant in the latest season of 'Stranger Things,' did you catch it?

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Caleb McLaughlin, Kobe Bryant
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Image Credit: Netflix/Stewart Cook/Shutterstock

Caleb McLaughlin made an incredibly sweet tribute to the late, great Kobe Bryant in Stranger Things season 4, volume 1, which premiered over the weekend. “The #8 jersey Lucas wears is a nod to Kobe Bryant’s first jersey number,” the Netflix Twitter account tweeted on Monday. “[Caleb] is a huge fan and had the idea to pay tribute to Kobe through his character’s jersey.” 

The latest season proved to be Netflix’s biggest premiere for an original series, with 286.79 Million hours viewed, surpassing one of their other big hits, Bridgerton, for its second season, which drew 193M, according to Deadline

Have you been keeping up with the hit Netflix show since its fourth season, volume 1, premiered over Memorial Day weekend? We’ve got other major cool facts about the extremely popular series, like how Vecna was revealed to be none other than Jamie Campbell Bower’s Henry Creel, a.k.a. One. As it turns out, Vecna wasn’t just created through CGI, but through some very detailed and extreme makeup. This villain was completely real, with Jamie transforming into the Stranger Things monster every time he needed to be onscreen.

HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with prosthetic makeup artist Barrie Gower about Jamie’s incredible transformation. “Usually doing a character like this, you would have a stunt Vecna as well. You would have your actor who might play a couple of headshots, a couple of parts here and there, and then you would have a double with the same physique, who would do the rest of the role and do all the stunts. Jamie did absolutely everything,” Barrie revealed.

Vecna
Vecna in ‘Stranger Things’ (Netflix).

“He did all the stunts as well. Anything you see Vecna in Stranger Things for was totally Jamie. We shot with him around 20 to 25 days. We did two makeup tests with him, and every day we’d do the makeup application. It’s a brand new set of appliances every day. He’s covered head to toe in prosthetics. There are about 24 to 25 different appliances that sort of overlap each other. Everything’s glued and adhered to the skin with a medical adhesive. It’s made out of silicone rubber, and we have other parts made out of a foam latex, lighter material as well.”