The Matrix - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Matrix or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Matrix

[amber]

The first day of shooting was the scene where Neo receives the phone from Morpheus in the office and attempts to flee from the Agents.

[jesse]

All of the references to street corners (for example, Wells and Lake) are real intersections in Chicago, Illinois, the Wachowskis' hometown. The subway train has signs for "Loop," another Chicago reference. The film however is quite obviously not set in Chicago or any other real city (though it was filmed in Sydney).

[bernice]

Neo is often associated with the number one. (Neo is an anagram for one, and a major plot point is whether or not he is "the One".) Meanwhile, Cypher's name means zero (from the Arabic sifr). Together, zero and one represent the basis of binary data, and thus the basis of all modern computer data. (Neo also lives in apartment 101, a number composed entirely of those two digits.) Finally, Trinity's name means "group of three", and she first appears in room 303.

[ivan]

The windows into which Trinity crashes the helicopter are those of the Columbia Pictures screening room in Sydney, Australia.

[aaron]

Janet Jackson was initially approached for the role of Trinity, but scheduling conflicts prevented her from accepting it. In an interview, she stated that turning down the role was difficult for her, so she later referenced the film in the "Intro" and "Outro" interludes on her tenth studio album "Discipline".

[francisco]

Laurence Fishburne stated that once he read the script, he did not understand why other people found it confusing. However, he had a doubt if the movie would ever be made, because it was "so smart".

[brent]

The Wachowskis had all the lead actors read "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard, "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelly, and "Introducing Evolutionary Psychology" by Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate in order to better understand the world of the movie. In the film, Neo actually hides his illegal computer files in a copy of Baudrillard's book.

[ronnie]

Body count: 39.

[jessie]

Sets from the film Dark City (1998), including rooftops, buildings, and other exterior sets, were used in this film. The rooftops that Trinity runs across at the beginning of the film are the same ones that John Murdoch runs across in Dark City. Both movies deal with humanity being kept in a carefully constructed illusion by outsiders, which prompted claims that The Matrix had effectively ripped off Dark City; in reality, the screenplay of The Matrix had been written long before Dark City was released.

[mathew]

Neo's combat training lasted for ten hours.

[duane]

Prior to the pre-production, Keanu Reeves suffered a two-level fusion of his cervical spine which had begun to cause paralysis in his legs, requiring him to undergo neck surgery. He was still recovering by the time of pre-production, but he insisted on training, so Woo-Ping Yuen let him practice punches and lighter moves. Reeves trained hard and even requested training on days off. However, the surgery still made him unable to kick for two out of four months of training. As a result, Reeves did not kick much in the film.

[tamara]

The helicopter was a full-scale light-weight mock-up, and its blades were added post-production by the visual effects team.

[kyle]

The spring-loaded cell phones used in the film were Nokia Stilletos or 8110s.

[willard]

The name of Morpheus' ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, is a Biblical reference to King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, from the biblical Book of Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar ("the Great") was famous for his conquests of Israel in Biblical times (specifically Judah and Jerusalem). He also built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (one of the lost Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) for his wife. He has a dream he can't remember, but keeps searching for an answer, in Daniel 2:1-49.

[melinda]

The movie is a modern adaptation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

[victoria]

Russell Crowe turned down the role of Morpheus. He said. "I just didn't get it. I couldn't get past page 42. That world was just not interesting to me."

[maureen]

When Mouse is cornered by the S.W.A.T. team during the raid, the guns he pulls out are a pair of cam-operated, electrically-driven 12-gauge automatic shotguns with 25-round drum magazines, capable of firing at 900 RPM. They were built specially for the movie by John Bowring, the film's key armorer.

[ella]

After Smith sends Neo flying backwards with a punch to the chest, Neo spews blood before getting back to his feet. Once he does, he taunts Smith in a fighting stance. The stance branches from the style Hapkido.