Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Pulp Fiction's pawnshop clocks helped create a movie myth.
Pulp Fiction's pawnshop clocks helped create a movie myth. Several clocks in that scene show 4:20, an easily spotted detail that grew into the claim that…
Discover more
Mickey's white gloves made his hands easier to see.
Mickey's white gloves made his hands easier to see. Against a dark body in early black-and-white animation, dark hands could disappear into the silhouette.…
Discover more
A blink can make a Walking Dead zombie look too alive.
A blink can make a Walking Dead zombie look too alive. Makeup artist and director Greg Nicotero described removing blinks when editing a particularly…
Discover more
The Shining makes a stack of typed pages reveal the horror.
The Shining makes a stack of typed pages reveal the horror. Wendy discovers that Jack's apparent writing consists of the same sentence repeated in different…
Discover more
Stagehands on the set of the original Star Trek television series had to physically pull the futuristic automatic sliding doors open using a complex system of hidden ropes and pulleys.
Stagehands on the set of the original Star Trek television series had to physically pull the futuristic automatic sliding doors open using a complex system of…
Discover more
Sound designer Ben Burtt secretly slipped an obscure, exaggerated stock sound effect called the Wilhelm Scream into the original Star Wars movie as a private joke among his audio engineering friends.
Sound designer Ben Burtt secretly slipped an obscure, exaggerated stock sound effect called the Wilhelm Scream into the original Star Wars movie as a private…
Discover more
STACKY FOR IPHONEA bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.
Keep discovering with Stacky. Interesting facts in an app that is always within reach.
Brad Pitt injured his Achilles tendon while playing Achilles.
Brad Pitt injured his Achilles tendon while playing Achilles. Pitt described the injury during Troy as a tendon problem caused by wear from fighting on sand,…
Discover more
Paramount's mountain logo survived the mergers that built the studio.
Paramount's mountain logo survived the mergers that built the studio. Founder W. W. Hodkinson created the mountain-and-stars design for the distribution…
Discover more
The Golden Girls and And Just Like That… frame women in their fifties very differently.
The Golden Girls and And Just Like That… frame women in their fifties very differently. Rue McClanahan was 51 when she began playing Blanche; Sarah Jessica…
Discover more
Quentin Tarantino's iconic crime thriller Pulp Fiction cost a mere eight million dollars to produce, with more than five million of that tiny budget going strictly toward paying the salaries of the star-studded cast.
Quentin Tarantino's iconic crime thriller Pulp Fiction cost a mere eight million dollars to produce, with more than five million of that tiny budget going…
Discover more
BoJack Horseman features a running joke involving a massive banner company that constantly misprints the exact instructions given by characters placing orders.
BoJack Horseman features a running joke involving a massive banner company that constantly misprints the exact instructions given by characters placing…
Discover more
George RR Martin deliberately delayed writing the final books in the Game of Thrones series long enough for the television show to completely ruin the ending.
George RR Martin deliberately delayed writing the final books in the Game of Thrones series long enough for the television show to completely ruin the ending.…
Discover more
The Matrix's impossible world was drawn before it was filmed.
The Matrix's impossible world was drawn before it was filmed. The Wachowskis worked with comic artists Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce on extensive shot-by-shot…
Discover more
Zelda's cartridge kept a little memory alive after power-off.
Zelda's cartridge kept a little memory alive after power-off. The NES release used a battery to maintain save data in memory inside the cartridge. You could…
Discover more
Steven Spielberg famously directed Schindler's List and Jurassic Park during the exact same year, managing the post-production of dinosaurs while filming a harrowing historical drama.
Steven Spielberg famously directed Schindler's List and Jurassic Park during the exact same year, managing the post-production of dinosaurs while filming a…
Discover more
Star Trek's transporter saved money—and got the story moving faster.
Star Trek's transporter saved money—and got the story moving faster. Gene Roddenberry said landing the Enterprise on a planet would consume too much of the…
Discover more
Fox executives canceled Family Guy twice before finally realizing the massive amount of money they were losing in DVD sales and syndication rights. College students buying boxed sets helped bring the show back.
Fox executives canceled Family Guy twice before finally realizing the massive amount of money they were losing in DVD sales and syndication rights. College…
Discover more
Sean Bean's downward glances helped hide a dialogue prompt.
Sean Bean's downward glances helped hide a dialogue prompt. He reportedly kept revised lines near his knee during the Council of Elrond scene. Looking down…
Discover more
Stranger Things built its nightmare wall from disturbingly real references.
Stranger Things built its nightmare wall from disturbingly real references. For season five, ILM studied tendons, veins, and other biological textures to…
Discover more
The Dalek's alien shell had to fit a seated human.
The Dalek's alien shell had to fit a seated human. Raymond Cusick designed Doctor Who's familiar prop around the practical need to hide an operator inside.…
Discover more
Pixar accidentally deleted almost the entirety of Toy Story 2 from their central servers during production because an anonymous employee typed a single flawed command code into the system.
Pixar accidentally deleted almost the entirety of Toy Story 2 from their central servers during production because an anonymous employee typed a single flawed…
Discover more
Psychiatrists found patients who believed life was a reality show.
Psychiatrists found patients who believed life was a reality show. In a 2012 paper, Joel and Ian Gold described patients who believed their daily lives were…
Discover more
Konami released an anonymous, terrifying demo called P.T.
Konami released an anonymous, terrifying demo called P.T. on the PlayStation 4 in 2014, which players eventually discovered was a brilliant interactive teaser…
Discover more
Pulp Fiction hides 4:20 on clocks in the pawnshop.
Pulp Fiction hides 4:20 on clocks in the pawnshop. The clocks in that scene provide a small visual reference to the number associated with cannabis culture.…
Discover more