What started off as nothing more than a repeated joke in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz has given way to a full-fledged trilogy with the release of the new film, The World’s End. In this video from IGN, writer-director Edgar Wright, writer-star Simon Pegg, and co-star Nick Frost explain how the simple repeated use of a reference to a brand of convenience store ice cream cone became a thematic continuation from one film to the next, reusing certain gags, ideas, actors, and the overall theme of friendship to create a logical end-point, despite having none of the same story elements or characters.

Find out if everything comes full circle when The World’s End hits theaters on August 23rd.