WMG / Escape from New York

The Duke is Cyrus.

Escape From New York is an alternate reality if he had never been assassinated, and his plan to unite the gangs of New York had succeeded.

The Duke is Masai, Cyrus' second-in-command.

Escape From New York is what happens after Masai takes over the Gramercy Riffs and fulfills Cyrus' dream of uniting all the gangs in the city.

The remake will have Snake as a woman, played by Michelle Rodriguez

Okay, this is more wishful thinking, but anyone who's seen Machete knows what I'm talking about.

• Funnily enough, the main character in Doomsday was imagined as Snake as a woman.

Snake Plissken is Ajax from The Warriors

After he was arrested, they gave him a choice: the army, or jail. He chose the army, participated in Special Ops, flew the GulfFire over Leningrad, ended up becoming a criminal again...you get the idea.

• It's somehow doubtful that someone with a criminal record could become an officer, as Snake did.
  • There was a war on. A wartime expansion of forces, combined with battlefield losses, would create a heavy enough demand for officers that exceptions could be made in order to get enough men to fill the Order of Battle.
    • Men, yes. Officers, no. Unless Snake got a Field Promotion.
• Snake seems very unfamiliar with New York to have been a member of a street gang.
  • Manhattan wasn't part of the Warriors' turf, and even if Ajax knew Manhattan fairly well from his time in the Warriors, chances are that in the decade that it's been a prison colony Manhattan has probably been changed beyond recognition.

Snake Plissken is Swan from The Warriors

He and Mercy leave New York, but eventually part ways. As above, he joins the army and the rest is history.

Escape From New York is set in the Fallout universe

Snake's oversized watch is an early Pipboy prototype.

• Tunnel Snake Plisskens rule!

Escape From New York is set in the Judge Dredd universe

The USPF is a precursor to the judges. Their uniforms with riot helmets even look very similar to the Judges' uniforms in the Origins flashbacks. New York is part of the undercity in the Dredd verse, so it's possible that the city was just built over with the prisoners still there (it's not as if they gave a shit about them to begin with) to create the foundations for Mega City One and the prisoners' descendants later devolved into Troggies, the undercity dwellers seen in some stories.

Why everyone thought Snake was dead

• It's a coverup for him trying to rob the Federal Reserve. Instead of telling the public that a decorated war hero turned traitor, they said he was KIA.
  • Everybody in New York knows who Snake is already. It's doubtful they know about the Federal Reserve. It's more likely that Kansas City is why everyone thinks Snake is dead.
    • Possibly during his military service the press coverage of one of Snake's missions implied that Snake was fatally wounded, or said that Snake was seriously wounded to the point where survival was considered unlikely, and the distorted version of the headline that got through to the prisoners made them think that Snake had died.

The explosive pellets that were going to blow open Snake's cartoid arteries?

Lie. They didn't need to be real: after 24 hours neither Snake nor the President mattered. Snake only needed to believe they were real so that he was motivated.

• Considering that the same thing happened in Escape from L.A., this is very plausible.
• According to some sources, the explosive pellets were going to be revealed to be a lie with Snake handing over the tape and the countdown timer running out, showing that he was never really in any danger (Carpenter cut this and played it straight in this film, and recycled the whole thing being a lie in the second film).

Snake Plissken is a descendant of The Man With No Name.

Why else would Lee Van Cleef be in the movie with him.

• Some reckon that Snake is a Shout-Out to The Man With No Name's Snake handled revolver. Plus, Snake has a preference for revolvers.

Assault on Precinct 13, Escape From New York, Escape from L.A. and Ghosts of Mars are on the same timeline.

For Assault on Precinct 13, it deals with youth crimes, in particular, gang activity. In the film, it seems as if gang activity is something that is slowly getting out of control, and even after the events of the film, there's still going to be more gang violence occurring. This could be the starting point of everything, as Escape From New York's opening narration explains that crime has increased to 400% in 1988 in the United States. Following what appears to be another World War, and after the gas attack that makes New York uninhabitable (an explanation that comes from the novel adaptation of EFNY), the United Police Force is formed and New York is turned into a prison. The youth gangs of the 1970s slowly become massive gangs, with maybe even the Duke of New York starting out as a member (a man as powerful as the Duke has to start somewhere).

Now fast forward towards the end of Escape from L.A., Snake Plisskin knocks the world out of commission for a while, but it eventually bounces back from it. The United Police Force is disbanded, the entire U.S. probably in shambles due to the revolution that took advantage of the blackout. Mars is eventually colonized, with a lot of people fleeing Earth to be able to get off of it for a better life. But unlike the male-lead countries on Earth, where major mistakes of the past were made by men, Mars opts for a Matriarchy instead, which works. Then the events of Ghosts of Mars occurs.

Cabbie wasn't a criminal, he was a taxi driver who chose to stay in New York when it was sealed off

• In the film, it's implied that New York has been a prison colony for about a decade, but Cabbie says he's been driving taxis for thirty years.

Escape From New York takes place in the same universe as A Clockwork Orange

• Both works feature governments resorting to drastic measures to curb their spikes in crime rates; instead of turning an island in Britain (like the Isle of Man or one of the Channel Islands) into a prison colony, the British government attempts to brainwash its criminals.

Someone in the prison has a working TV or at least a radio.

• Pretty much every person Snake meets knows who he is and believes him to be dead, including Cabbie, who has been driving his taxi in New York for the last thirty years. The city has power in certain sections and we know from the radio Snake brings in with him and the tracers on both Snake and the President that radio waves can be transmitted in and out of the city. Given that Manhatten island was pretty much just abandoned, plenty of stuff would have been left behind. It's not inconceivable that the Duke at least would have a TV in his private quarters or that at least one of his cars would have a working radio. On that point, it was probably reported that Snake died after the Federal Reserve robbery or after Kansas City, hence why everyone in the prison thinks he's dead.