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'Blade Runner' fans connect Rutger Hauer's death to his character's: 'Roy Batty also passed away in 2019'

Suzy Byrne
Updated

Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor who went up against Harrison Ford in 1982’s Blade Runner, died on July 19 at his home in the Netherlands, after a brief illness. He was 75.

Rutger Hauer died same year as Blade Runner character Roy Batty
Dutch actor Rutger Hauer has died — and fans that loved him in Blade Runner were quick to point out that his character in the film passed away the same year. (Photo: Roberto Serra - Iguana Press/Getty Images)

Tributes to the star led his name to trend on social media on Wednesday. Pretty quickly a connection was made between Hauer’s death to that of his villainous character Roy Batty’s in the Ridley Scott-directed sci-fi flick. That’s because the futuristic film was set in dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019. Now many fans are pointing out that Hauer and Batty “died in the same year.”

Here were some of the folks who connected the dots and were pretty shook by the eerie coincidence:

The character was the villain of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 sci-fi novel, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, as well as the 1982 Scott film upon which it was loosely inspired. Batty was a synthetic human, known as a replicant, which rebelled and returned to Earth.

Ford’s cop character, Rick Deckard, was taxed with hunting him and his cohorts down as part of a team known as Blade Runners. Before Batty died, he delivered his infamous “tears in rain” monologue, which Hauer rewrote himself. The 50-second bit has been called a defining moment of the film — and Hauer’s career.

After Blade Runner, Hauer appeared in the 1987 British TV film Escape from Sobibor, for which he won a Golden Globe, as well as films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sin City. He also had roles on TV’s True Blood and Channel Zero.

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