A four-year-old Chinese boy conjured up images of the extraterrestrial in the film, ET, after he got his head trapped inside an L-shaped plastic pipe, mainland media reports.

Mainland bloggers said photographs posted online of the unnamed boy from Zhejiang province, who was stuck fast for 30 minutes before firemen rescued him, looked just the extraterrestrial in the scene from the Hollywood film, when its head was covered with a white sheet as it sat on a bicycle while fleeing the American authorities.

Other bloggers dubbed the child a “pea shooter” because he looked like one of the characters in popular Plants vs. Zombies video game.

The boy had put his head into the pipe on Tuesday afternoon while playing by himself inside his parents’ shop, but had fully expected to be able to remove it, the news portal Cnr.cn reported.

However, his head became stuck so tightly that he began to have breathing problems and was unable to cry for help.

His parents failed to notice what had happened immediately because they were busy serving customers at the time.