We watched Sleeper the other night, Woody Allen’s 1973 comedy about a man who wakes up 200 years in the future. I enjoyed its goofy humor, of course, but also noticed two new things about it.

One: the Domesticon robot in Sleeper bore a striking resemblance to C3PO from Star Wars, made four years later:

Both have the same mincing shuffle, the same mild British-inflected voice, the same arms-at-the-ready stance. Was George Lucas influenced by the earlier movie, or are both parodying some earlier source?

Two: In the scene where Allen is explaining the ancient artifacts from his time, he’s given a Playboy centerfold, and says, “I’ll take this for further study and give you a complete report later”. You see only a brief glimpse of the model’s head, but it is unmistakably Lenna, the woman made famous as a standard test image for computer scientists:

For more on Lenna’s history, see Complete Story of Lenna.