Everything we saw that reminded us of UD
On Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, the Campus Activities Board hosted a showing of the 1993 hit film starring Bill Murray, “Groundhog Day,” to kick off the celebrations for Groundhog week. And, the more you rewatch a movie, the more you notice details outside the main plot. For your edification, here are some things we spotted.
To summarize the movie: a selfish meteorologist assigned to record the Groundhog Day festival in Punxsutawney gets stuck re-living that day over and over again. He first uses this power for vice—Glaucon was right!—until he takes interest in Rita, his coworker, which leads him to become the kind and caring man she was hoping for.Then, they begin a successful relationship that helps him escape the time loop.
First, the film is about a UDallas-original holiday, Groundhog Day. No one celebrated it before we did, you see? The locals of a small town come together to party in the park—though we cannot recall whether these townsfolk drank beers at their local time of 7 a.m.—to see if there’s gonna be an early spring or not.
In the film, it turns out that winter is going to be longer than expected, and a blizzard comes in at the end of the day. One cannot help but make the connection between the scathing freeze this year that kept us out of class and the snow that kept Phil from leaving Punxsutawney.
Second, Rita just can’t stop reminiscing about Rome—and neither can we. When she and Phil go out for drinks, she orders a Sweet Vermouth on the rocks with a twist, specifically because it reminds her of the way the afternoon sun hits the buildings of Rome. Sappy? Sure. Do we blame her? Of course not; we are too busy remembering our first time inside St. Peter’s Basilica and that sun-orange Aperol Spritz we had in Venice!
Oh, and another quasi-Rome reference: Phil explains his time-loop situation to Rita in Tip Top Cafe, which reminds us of the legendary Top Supermercati which has fed UD Romers with cheap meats, alcohol and pizza bianca for years.
More on this note, both Phil and Rita represent archetypes of UD students. Rita, immersed in 19th century French poetry, quality beverages, literature and music, is literally me (Ellison). Phil, with his superpower that puts him in a situation where no eternal consequences seem to come from his actions and he can do whatever he wants, assumes the role of the Gyges in the myth of the “Ring of Gyges” in Plato’s “Republic.” That is the same first self-insert character every freshman male encounters while taking Phil and Eth, at least until Dante in Lit Trad II.Moreover, Phil decides to use one day to learn the answers to Jeopardy and show off his faux-knowledge to impress the other old people watching it for the first time. Wait, is that just me (Teson)? Anyway, this archetype takes its most recent form thanks to the opportunity to impress at CAB’s new monthly trivia nights.
Finally, one of the film’s plot points towards the end of the movie is a vibrant male auction in the hotel—just as the Male Auction is at the end of Charity Week. In this version, however, the ladies don’t accidentally end up bidding more than they thought they were.
It’s also funny that the male auction in the film takes place after a day of Phil’s charitable works to members of Punxsutawney. He saves both a man from choking and a kid from falling, gives money to a homeless man, replaces a flat tire and even gives newlyweds tickets to Wrestle Mania—though admittedly, these are a far cry from the laudable work of In My Shoes and Clayton Dabney for Kids with Cancer.
Similar to the action classic “Die Hard,” audiences are divided on whether the external references to other material in the film are deliberate or not. Yet, just as “Die Hard” is really a Christmas movie about the story of the Incarnation, “Groundhog Day” is about UD.
It’s also Dr. Roper’s favorite movie. As Dean Roper, someone who’s been at UD for decades, loves the film so much, that should be reason enough to validate the references as real and deliberate.
All of these references to UD culture woven throughout the film make “Groundhog Day” a film that easily could have been produced for Film Fest. The film was released in 1993, so UD had existed for long enough for director Harold Ramis to get to know the traditions. Honestly, if Ramis was a UD grad, we wouldn’t be surprised.