Did you see Weapons this past weekend? Better yet, did you see all the Weapons memes this past weekend? Whether or not you ended up at the theater, you most likely saw a lot of hilarious posts about the film — maybe even one particular one about a sizable spread of hot dogs. Well, it turns out that hot dog moment in Zach Cregger’s new horror film is actually a subtle and heartfelt nod to his late friend and collaborator, Trevor Moore.
Warning! Spoilers for Weapons follow:
In the horror mystery, the hot dog moment comes just before a certain someone (keeping spoilers to a min here to protect the innocent, AKA those who have yet to hit their local multiplex) arrives at the home of Marcus, the Maybrook Elementary School principal who is one of the central figures in the story.
His husband prepared a lunch tray for the couple to share which consists of seven hot dogs with only mustard, a healthy handful of chips, four chocolate chip cookies, a bowl of raw carrots, and a huge side of ranch dip. Pretty solid midday spread if I do say so myself. But the specific choice to use seven hot dogs — and not something more even-keeled like six or eight — is a reference to a Whitest Kids U’Know sketch from Season 3 of the show.
The sketch, which was part of the second episode of that season, is called Hot Dog Timmy. In the skit, Trevor Moore — who was one of five members of the beloved comedy group alongside Cregger — plays a doctor who reads a man’s test results.
Shortly after he reveals he has the results of a test, he asks Timmy (played by Timmy Williams) how many hot dogs he eats a day. Shockingly, the man gives him an average of seven hot dogs. Naturally, he’s taken aback by that admission. “Is that bad?” Timmy asks, to which Trevor’s doctor character hilariously responds, “It’s not good.”
The seven hot dogs thing in #Weapons / #WeaponsMovie is a tribute to Trevor Moore. pic.twitter.com/8T95v4TuDv
— Courtney Howard (@Lulamaybelle) August 11, 2025
The sketch group was created by Cregger and Moore and went on to become a popular TV series. The show ran for five seasons on Fuse and later IFC with Cregger and Moore joined by other members Williams, Sam Brown, and Darren Trumeter.
Moore unexpectedly died on August 7, 2021 after falling from a balcony at his Los Angeles home. Cregger has revealed on the press tour for Weapons that the film as a whole was inspired by his friend’s untimely passing, but it seems the movie’s release date and central set piece of 2:17am are also connected to him. With the preview day included, Weapons was released on August 7, and Moore was said to have died around 2:30am.
“I wanted to do something honest,” Cregger recently told Rolling Stone about processing his grief through this project. “And I found that as I kept writing, and the more I identified with all of the people I was writing about, the more this became something like an honest diary of my inner shit.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
