Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen has quickly become one of Netflix’s biggest shows of the month, a creepy horror by the creators behind Stranger Things, but people are confused about why Rachel finds that random Barbie shoe. There’s actually a very chilling meaning behind the scene that you definitely missed.

When she walks into the service station to try and find help for the abandoned baby, Rachel finds an ominous pink doll shoe on the toilet floor. The shoe is then never mentioned again, and it doesn’t turn out to have any relevance to the chilling things that are going on.

However, the shoe actually links back to the very first scene, when Rachel and Nicky are driving to his parents’ house. He tells her about the creepy serial killer custard seller called Larry Poole, who murdered three women in the 90s, and she then listens to a podcast by a woman who almost became one of his victims.

In the podcast, the woman explains she found a Barbie shoe at her feet before Larry slit her throat. So, Rachel finding the Barbie shoe is a creepy link back to this moment.

Credit: Netflix

“He was in his truck and he was taking me down this remote highway, and that’s when I noticed this tiny little shoe at my feet. A Barbie shoe that could have meant he had a daughter, so I told him I was having a little girl. I was pregnant. I kept reminding him I’m pregnant,” the woman in the podcast recording says.

“Then, I saw a rest stop sign. I asked if we could stop and he just reached over and he slit my throat. It felt hot though, the blood coming out of me. And what I didn’t expect is that when you lose a lot of blood, you can feel actually euphoric. It was the same way I felt on my wedding day. Death was almost like love.”

Rachel drives along listening to this podcast while Nicky is sleeping, and the woman goes on to talk about how she was saved by a young couple at a rest stop after Larry threw her out onto the side of the road.

The Barbie shoe doesn’t end up having any significance to Rachel’s story, but it’s an eerie red herring designed to build suspense. It makes you think that perhaps the same serial killer is linked to the Cunninghams in some way, throwing you off the real evil, which is the curse in Rachel’s bloodline.