What Is Star Wars’ ‘Bad Feelings Club’ & Which Ahsoka Character Recently Joined?

While «I have a bad feeling about this» has become synonymous with «Star Wars,» «A New Hope» isn’t the first movie in which the phrase can be found. One of the astronauts in «2001: A Space Odyssey» says «I’ve got a bad feeling about him» in reference to the supercomputer HAL. That film came out in 1968, nine years prior to the first «Star Wars.»

So was George Lucas intentionally paying homage to an influential work of science fiction? It’s possible, but the phrase appears even earlier than that — in 1965’s «Battle of the Bulge.» Half of «Star Wars» is «Wars,» after all, and the epic war film has a scene in which a United States Army sergeant says «I got a bad feeling about this» right before a major massacre.

However, without Lucas directly commenting on where the line came from (if anywhere), it’s more than likely that it was a common saying he happened to use and that he wasn’t referencing anything. Now, though, when someone says, «I have a bad feeling about this,» most people immediately think of a galaxy far, far away.