17 Teeny Tiny, Almost Unnoticeable Details From Films That Prove The Writers Were Playing Chess While We Were Playing Checkers
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Making a movie is all about the details, even if we don't always notice them the first time around. But it's these bits of foreshadowing, Easter eggs, and world-building that really show the writers were paying attention.
So here are 17 fun and fascinating movie details:
1.The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
In the movie we see Tilda Swinton portraying the ominous White Witch, sporting a crown made of ice. What's interesting, is that, as the movie goes on, and as the witch's powers begin to dwindle, her icy crown steadily decreases in size! It's a nice little touch of imagery to show her withering strength.
2.Pulp Fiction — Kill Bill
Many people are aware of the connected Tarantino universe, which was actually referred to in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino stonewall Uma Thurman engages in some hefty foreshadowing by connecting her character, Mia Wallace, to the character she'll go on to play in Kill Bill. When talking about a pilot she'd recorded called Fox Force Five, she highlights some very obvious parallels with her character and accomplices in Kill Bill.
"There was a blonde one, Sommerset O'Neal from that show Baton Rouge, she was the leader. A Japanese one, a Black one, a French one, and a brunette one, me. We all had special skills. Somerset had a photographic memory, the Japanese fox was a kung fu master, the Black girl was a demolition expert, and the French fox' speciality was sex...""The character I played, Raven McCoy, her background was she was raised by circus performers. So she grew up doing a knife act. According to the show, she was the deadliest woman in the world with a knife."
Watch it here:
3.Back to the Future
There's always a lot of thought in movies when you're going back and forward in time, and clearly, the team behind Back to the Future were paying attention to the little details. One excellent bit is the change in the name of the mall. In the beginning, we see Marty pass a mall called "Twin Pines Mall."
He then transpires to go back in time, to the empty space where his town will eventually be built, inadvertently crashing into one of two pine trees that are right there in front of him. So, all the past/future meddling occurs, and when he returns to the present, the mall is now called "Lone Pine Mall," with a nod to the now sole tree that existed before the town was built.
4.Spider-Man 2
You can imagine when writing a movie there are so many opportunities to throw in a little joke here and there as a nod to the audience, and that's exactly what they did in Spider-Man 2. It's the scene where Peter (Tobey Maguire) is standing on the edge of a building, and he says that he needs a strong focus in order to jump. Peter then proceeds to fall off the side of a building, and hit a Ford Focus, which, of course, proves its strength by being undamaged. I bet the writers had a good chuckle there.
Here's the scene:
5.Cars
It wouldn't be a Pixar movie without some sort of fun world-building or Easter eggs, and the landscape for Cars was a super nice touch. As you can see, the rock formations are in the shape of old classic cars!
6.Shaun of the Dead
The Cornetto trilogy is packed full of fun bits of foreshadowing, but perhaps the best one comes in Shaun of the Dead, where Ed essentially lays out the entire plot in his plan for the day:
"We'll have a bloody Mary first thing, a bite at the King's Head, a couple at the Little Princess, stagger back here, bang — back at the bar for shots."
Superficially, this sounds like a plan for a booze-heavy day out, but each thing he says happens in their attempts to fend off the zombies — with a little bit of metaphorical help, of course.
The “bloody Mary first thing” is, of course, the first zombie they kill in the garden, who was called Mary. Then on to "a bite at the King's Head" — while they don't grab a bite to eat, Philip does get a bite in the neck at their next stop. Then on to grabbing "a couple at the Little Princess" — they go to pick up Shaun's ex (I guess his "little princess"), but also have to take the couple that she lives with.
The stumbling back is recreated when the group have to pretend to be zombies in order to fit in, and "back to the bar for shots" is fulfilled by them heading to The Winchester for a nice old shootout.
7.The Lego Movie
What do people do with Lego pieces? Play with them, obviously! Well I guess the dad in this movie didn't, but he DID pick them up with his hands, something that the filmmakers must have thought about when they decided to add thumb/fingerprints onto the shiny bits of the Lego characters. It adds just a little something and shows they had a keen eye for detail!
Honestly, if The Lego Movie hadn't thought to include this detail, I doubt anyone would have noticed or complained. Okay, someone would have complained (someone always does).
8.Get Out
It's one of those moments that we notice, but don't particularly understand until a bit later on. When they're having drinks outside, and Georgina is filling up the glasses, Missy accidentally hits her class with the spoon (similar to the mug/spoon trigger), causing Georgina to briefly snap out of the cerebral chamber she's kept in. It's a little thing, but adds a lot to the building of suspense and suspicion.
9.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Obviously, there are dozens of world-building objects and materials in the Harry Potter films, but one that certainly passed me by the first few watches was the wizarding equivalents of famous cereal brands. In this background shot, we can see that for breakfast in the great hall, the students get to choose from a variety of foods, one of which is shown to be a cereal called Cheeri-owls!
10.The Shawshank Redemption
We only catch a glimpse of this one, but it's interesting nonetheless. In the scene where Red gets his file checked to see if he's qualified for early release, we see the mugshot of his much younger self. Well, in order to get a realistic likeness of what Morgan Freeman would have looked like at the age when his character was sentenced, the director actually used a photo of Morgan's son!
11.The Lord of the Rings
During the filming of LOTR, the production team put A LOT of effort into the costume and armor design, which is partly why the movies are so good — they even had two fully qualified blacksmiths making weapons and armor for them! But one piece of equipment had some real sentimental value, and it's something that we could easily have missed. Each kingdom has their own specific type of armor, and when Boromir dies, Aragorn takes his vambrace and wears them from then on.
You can see the moment here:
12.Guardians of the Galaxy
So, Guardians is a sci-fi fantasy film about a ragtag team of galactic travelers, including a tree-person and a modified talking raccoon — it's not like being realistic was something they needed to spend too much time nailing. That being said, they still made sure to give us a reason why all these random individuals from different parts of the galaxy could understand each other. When Quill gets arrested, his body diagnostics show that he has a "translator implant" in his neck — showing how he can understand everyone!
Here's the scene:
13.The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan is well-versed in the Easter egg and fine details game. In The Dark Knight, he shows off the Joker's creative side when he's on the lorry, chasing down Batman. The slogan on the front of the lorry originally read "Laughter is the best medicine," but that pesky nihilistic villain had painted a letter S before it, so it says, "Slaughter is the best medicine." Genius.
You can spot it here:
14.John Wick & John Wick 2
This is another one that not many people would have noticed, mainly because the films came out three years apart. Despite this large gap in the production, the second movie follows on a few days from the first. The production team were clearly very keen to ensure that this timeframe was seamless, and thus made sure that the cars parked in front of the Continental were indeed the exact same ones (well, make and model anyway) as the ones we saw at the end of the first film.
15.Moana
In Moana, she (and we) discover that her community has not always lived on the land she calls home. Throughout the film, we see that her people used to sail the seas, as she always dreamt of. In fact, this was based on something researchers called "The Long Pause" — a period of time when seafaring Polynesians settled on Pacific islands after their long voyage.
While some aspects of the movie's depictions of Polynesians were scrutinized, there was certainly a lot of attention to detail!
16.Watchmen
So, Watchmen is set in an alternative universe (obviously, there are literal superheroes), where the US invaded (?) Vietnam, thus making the country another US state. So, every time we see the famous US flag with its stars and stripes, it has 51 stars, not 50!
Here's the Comedian's funeral scene:
17.The Truman Show
Of course, The Truman Show is full of little details that, while small, are crucial to the plot — largely to get Truman to start questioning his existence. Some of the fun little details include the moment that the travel agent enters the shot still wearing her makeup bib from the dressing room.
Other little details include his regimen, where he takes vitamin D tablets in the morning (needed due to his whole life being inside). He's also taught his little greeting catchphrase — "Good morning, and if I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight" from early on, to ensure viewers from all different timezones get their proper greeting.
