Best war movie trivia of all time

Trivia: Hattie McDaniel's portrayal of Mammy earned her an Academy Award, the first to be given to an African American.

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Trivia: When the Japanese are heading towards Pearl Harbor, there is a shot of a pilot waving to kids playing baseball. This is a true story as the pilot was trying to get them away before the attack started.

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Trivia: Due to the political situation in Iraq, the location for scale shots was moved from Morocco to Mexico, an ideal alternate choice with its broad beach, however, the rushed decision presented some obstacles. Coastal Mexico is an endangered turtle habitat, so to be granted permission to set up the Greek encampment and build boats on the large stretch of beach the film crew implemented their own turtle incubation nursery, thus releasing a multitude of turtles while on location in Mexico! They also did not have an accurate idea of the physical conditions of that particular beach. As it turned out that beach was very erratic and one morning about 100 feet of beach had washed away overnight, leaving Greek ships teetering precariously on the edge of the bank with the missing sand.

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Super Grover

Trivia: In the scene with the man making the movie when they attack the beach, the man shooting the movie saying "Don't look at the camera" is actually Francis Ford Coppola.

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Trivia: Bill Millin, Lord Lovat's piper, earned the nickname 'Mad Piper' due to the fact that he was spared by German snipers on D-Day because they thought him to be crazy playing bagpipes in the middle of a war.

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Trivia: Actor Richard Davalos kept his bayonet razor sharp and accidentally stabbed Telly Savalas in the arm during the scene where the squad jumps over the wall to ambush the Germans on the road, warranting bandages on Savalas' arm. In the film, Savalas kept his shirt sleeves rolled up, until he was stabbed, and then kept his sleeves rolled down to hide the bandages.

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Trivia: The Tiger tank used in the battle with Fury is an actual German Tiger tank that was captured by British forces in North Africa in 1943. Its original turret number is 131, meaning the tank is from the 1st company, 3rd platoon, 1st tank, which was the platoon leader's vehicle.

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Trivia: The original ending for Gladiator was that Proximo would live and he would bury the figurines in the sand of the Coliseum. However, Oliver Reed's death during filming required the ending to be changed.

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Trivia: Adrian Brody insisted on learning to play the piano himself because he detested the idea of him being in a long shot pretending to play the instrument and then the camera showing someone else's hands on a close up shot actually playing. He said he hated that, not just for him, but on any other film that had such a scene. So he went and took lessons, practicing for hours on end.

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Trivia: Nicole Kidman played all her own piano for this movie.

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Trivia: Virtually all of the extras who play soldiers in the film were members of Civil War Re-enactor groups who not only freely donated their time but also supplied their own uniforms and equipment. This ensued that the film-makers did not have pay for their own extras and that they could stage the massive battle scenes without blowing the budget.

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Trivia: While Steve McQueen performed most of his own stunts, the only stunt he didn't perform was the 60 foot jump over the Austrian-Swiss border fence. The jump was performed by stuntman Bud Ekins, who later doubled for McQueen in "Bullitt."

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Trivia: Director Joshua Logan originally wanted Elizabeth Taylor to play Nellie.

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Trivia: R. Lee Ermey actually wrote all of Gunny Hartman's dialog himself. Ermey was involved in a serious car accident right before shooting, so Kubrick invited Ermey to come stay at his house in England to recover. While recovering Ermey read the script over and over, and he remarked that the Drill Instructor's dialog that was in the script was obviously the work of a screenwriter with a cliche imagination who obviously had no idea what boot camp was really like. So Kubrick allowed Ermey to re-write all of the dialog himself.

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Trivia: Conrad Veidt, who played Maj. Strasser, was well known in the theatrical community in Germany for his hatred of the Nazis, and in fact was forced to hurriedly escape the country when he found out that the SS had sent a death squad after him because of his anti-Nazi activities.

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Trivia: In scene 32, Katsumoto and Algren ride through the line of troops and as Algren dismounts, his horse kicks out at the soldier to the right of the camera and hits him in the groin. The soldier bends over with the impact, backs up, then bravely straightens up again as the scene continues.

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Trivia: One thing was digitally edited for the promotional posters (the trio of pictures of Guinevere, Lancelot and Arthur): Keira Knightly's (Guinevere) bust was increased purely to attract more viewers.

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Trivia: Director Oliver Stone claimed that the lead character of Chris was largely autobiographical and mirrored many of Stone's own experiences as a soldier in Vietnam.

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Trivia: Perhaps you're wondering what William Wallace shouts after delivering his speech just prior to the Battle of Stirling. It's "Alba gu brath," which means "Scotland forever."

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Trivia: According to veterans of the actual event, when the Rangers got the go-ahead for the mission and were getting their gear ready, "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N Roses was playing on the base's loudspeakers. There were some half-serious comments among the men about the appropriateness of this song. However, the film's producers failed to secure the rights to use "Welcome to the Jungle," so they substituted Faith No More's "Falling to Pieces"--which is perhaps thematically in line with what happened on the raid.

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Trivia: In one scene where Charlie sheen spins his plane, he says "I learnt this one from Paula Abdul". Paula Abdul was Charlie Sheen's then sister in law.

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Trivia: To acquire the withdrawn, hollowed-out look of his character, Christopher Walken ate nothing but bananas and rice.

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Cubs Fan

Trivia: 1941 was directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie opens with a spoof of "Jaws", which Spielberg also directed. The woman who swims out and winds up on the submarine is the same actress who was eaten at the beginning of Jaws.

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Trivia: Some weapons used by 300 are actually weapons from previous war epics like "Alexander" and "Troy." They were used in this film to cut costs.

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Trivia: The pivotal role of "Minnesota Ryan", the Private Ryan that Captain Miller mistakes for the Private Ryan for whom he is searching, is played by a very young and, at the time quasi-unknown, Nathan Fillion.

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Cubs Fan

Trivia: In the English subtitles, the German troops are addressed as "Storm Troopers." The correct title of these men were "Sturmpionieren" or "Assault Engineers", who were highly trained in street fighting using flamethrowers, explosives, and other specialized equipment.

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Trivia: Ewan McGregor asking "What is a Jedi Knight?" is especially ironic (and probably an "in joke") because he famously played Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel films.

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Trivia: Has the highest weekend opening gross ($23 million) of any documentary. It also holds the record as the highest-grossing documentary of all time ($222 million worldwide, $119 million in the US alone).

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Trivia: In the scene were Blondie is using the radio, the message he is intercepting is about the Battle of the Bulge.

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Trivia: A dummy of Quentin Tarintino is used as one of the scalped dead Nazis in the scene where the basterds are in the valley and Donny beats the German officer into a pulp.

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