In February 2020, Rian Johnson revealed a Hollywood secret that threatened to spoil every mystery movie you'll ever watch. Speaking to Vanity Fair in a video breaking down his latest film, the director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Looper divulged a subtle clue hidden in his twisty new whodunit, Knives Out.
"Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but — and this is very pivotal — if you're ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera," Johnson said. "Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now."
In the years since, Johnson's quote has become a decoder ring of sorts for eagle-eyed movie and TV fans. Not sure if a character is good or evil? Wait for the camera to show you their smartphone and you'll have your answer. His own movie bears this out, with the murderous Chris Evans being one of the only Knives Out characters sending green bubbles to the group chat. This rule seemingly even predates the iPhone — back in 2002, WIRED pointed out that the heroes on 24 all use Mac computers, while the terrorists were stuck with PCs.
This brings us to Severance, an Apple TV+ show so chock-full of mysteries that we don't even know what state it takes place in (more on that in a bit), let alone who's a hero and who's a villain. So when protagonist Mark Scout (Adam Scott) was spotted holding an Android phone, it felt like a huge break in the case. Was our leading man actually a secret baddie? However, a closer look at the many smartphones in Severance reveals something far stranger: There are absolutely zero iPhones in Apple's hit sci-fi show.
The reason why Apple's products are totally absent from the show is unclear, but what this absence reveals is perhaps even more interesting than one spoilery Easter egg could ever be. Instead, the choice to remove iPhones from the world of Severance gives us a window into the show's unique approach to world-building and how it's used to create a series unlike anything else on TV.
It's worth noting that not everyone in Severance owns a smartphone, Apple or otherwise. In Season 2, Irving (one of Mark's severed colleagues played by John Turturro) is seen making a call from a pay phone — remember those? And back in Season 1, Mark's former coworker Petey (Yul Vazquez) shows up at his house with a flip phone, which some fans identified as a modern "dumbphone" called the Easyfone Prime-A1.
However, smartphones as we know them do exist in the show's universe. Mark's unbearable brother-in-law Ricken (Michael Chernus) is shown using a generic Android-style device in Season 1, and we've also seen Mark wielding a similar gadget. When he's working on the Severed Floor, Mark's boss Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) carries a touchscreen satellite phone reminiscent of the Android-powered Thuraya X5 Touch (presumably so he can get a signal from within the company's top-secret underground offices).
So if it's clear that smartphones exist in Severance's world, then why can't there be iPhones? We reached out to Apple TV+ for comment, but the company wasn't able to provide an answer in time for publication. However, we have a few theories of our own.
What does it mean that Apple TV+'s hit show has no iPhones?
The first, and more enticing, theory is that the creators of Severance purposefully removed all iPhones from their sci-fi universe to obscure the truth from its audience. Apple is well aware that we know about its iPhone-villain rule, so it makes sense that a hit Apple TV+ show would be cautious not to give away any secrets by blindly following that very rule. If Mark (or, god forbid, Milchick) had an iPhone, it might give away the goat (pun very much intended).
The second, more likely theory is that the smartphones in Severance are designed to reinforce a larger point: that the show takes place in a world familiar but eerily different from our own. Every little detail seems designed to remind audiences that the story is set in a funhouse mirror reflection of our own reality, right down to the retro-futuristic computers that Mark and his coworkers use for their microdata refinement. One Season 1 screenshot shared on Reddit even reveals that the story takes place in the town of Kier, PE. That's right, Severance created its own fictional state, though the same screenshot also includes a reference to the real-life city of Boston.
(Notably, another moment from Season 1 that's been dissected on Reddit is a shot of Mark's license plate, which reveals he was born in 1978 and dates the license to 2020. So while Severance may not take place in our reality, it does take place at around the same time.)
It's also worth noting that Severance isn't the only alternate-reality sci-fi show on Apple TV+ forced to deal with similar issues. The critically acclaimed (if significantly less popular) For All Mankind began as an alternate history about a world where the U.S.S.R. beat America to the Moon and has since leapt forward into a dramatically different 21st Century where technology and space exploration advanced much more rapidly — including smartphones.
In 2022, the show's third season, which takes place in an alternate version of the early ‘90s, featured a video phone designed to resemble Apple's Newton devices. For old-school technology geeks, it made for a fascinating look into a parallel reality where Steve Jobs never killed off the Newton product line. The iPhone may not exist in For All Mankind (at least not yet), but something just as interesting has taken its place.
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As for Severance, while the show's total lack of iPhones raises plenty of questions, we're hesitant to read too deeply into this one minor detail, at least for now. After all, as many have pointed out, the iPhone-villain rule is really more of a suggestion. For example, the guy in John Wick who kills the hero's dog uses an iPhone — and it doesn't get more evil than that.
Even Rian Johnson has poked fun at the rule. In his Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, one line of dialogue reveals that the movie's ultimate villain doesn't have a phone at all. Meanwhile, in the Oscar–winning class drama Parasite, director Bong Joon Ho ignores Apple's rule entirely. Instead, Bong gives his rich characters iPhones and his poor characters Androids, forcing the audience to figure out for themselves who's the hero and who's the villain.
Spoiler alert: In Parasite, the villain is capitalism. And, hey, maybe the same goes for Severance, too.
Severance Season 2 is now streaming on AppleTV+, with new episodes every Friday.
