Star Wars/Trivia

Listed Trivia:

 * Author Existence Failure: George Lucas hired SF pulp novel author and Hollywood screenwriter Leigh Brackett to write the script for The Empire Strikes Back. She wrote a first draft but died of cancer before she could revise it. Lucas wrote subsequent drafts himself, and later turned the script over to Lawrence Kasdan (writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark) for polishing. (Lucas's revisions after Brackett's death notably included the creation of the Luke, I Am Your Father moment. In Brackett's draft, Vader and Anakin were two separate characters, and Luke sees Anakin's Force ghost before heading off to duel Vader.)
 * Cash Cow Franchise: With 20th Century Fox famously signing away the merchandising rights to George Lucas as a way to save money on the original film.
 * Dawson Casting: Inverted by Ian McDiarmid, who was 35 when he was first cast as the Emperor in Return of the Jedi... then played straight by the same actor nineteen years later in The Phantom Menace.
 * Development Gag: Usually shows up in character names.
 * Fake Brit: Leia in A New Hope, briefly. Her accent change could be explained as indicative of speaking formally because she is a senator, much the same way Amidala's manner of speaking changed when she was under cover as her own handmaiden, and later when her term as queen ended. Another possible explanation: the scene where her Fake Brit accent is most prominent -- when she's arguing with Tarkin on the Death Star. She's talking down to him, letting him know she is his equal and will not be intimidated... but when he points the Wave Motion Gun at her home planet, she drops the pretense and the accent.
 * Fan Nickname: Luke's nickname amongst the fans is "Farmboy" or "Wormie". For Palpatine, Sid, Palpy, Palps, or Palpidious. "Vaderkin" to refer to Vader between taking the name Darth Vader and the Mustafar incident. AT-STs are commonly referred to as "chicken walkers".
 * Ascended Fanon: The Rebels in Star Wars Battlefront 2 will call the AT-STs chicken walkers on occasion.
 * Flip-Flop of God: Over the years, George Lucas has made many contradictory claims about the development, conceptual background, and future plans of the series, always claiming that whatever his current plans are are what he had in mind all along. Of special note is the prospect of a sequel trilogy. Lucas made statements claiming that he both had and did not have plans to create Episodes VII, VIII and IX. For a long time, Lucasfilm's official stance was that the saga culminated with Luke saving his father and confronting the Emperor, and since that had happened there was no need to create further feature films. However, in late 2012, he sold Lucasfilm to Disney Pictures for an estimated $4.05 billion, so they could produce new films every "two to three years" with the franchise continuing "well into the future".
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Also overlaps with The Other Darrin: Many countries has dubbed the whole original trilogy in the respective languages more than once: The worst offender are the Japanese versions, since only just the first movie was dubbed about six times, and excluding the upcoming Blu-Ray version (and with different voice actors) since the original trilogy was broadcasted by many Japanese networks in the past. This is adverted with the prequels, since George Lucas wanted a consistent voice cast between all the movies, regardless the network or media format.
 * I Am Not Spock: Nearly the entire cast has suffered this to some degree. Most of them have embraced it, while others were left resentful of being typecast (most notably Alec Guinness). Averted by Harrison Ford, though, who launched a successful acting career outside of the Star Wars films.
 * Mean Character, Nice Actor:
 * Palpatine may be very evil, but Ian McDiarmid is very funny, witty and charming.
 * And the Grand Moff Tarkin was played by Peter Cushing, who was known to fans and co-workers alike as a sweet and kindhearted gentleman.
 * Meaningful Release Date: Episode VIII will be released on May 26, 2017, forty years and one day since the release of A New Hope. It's also likely many theaters will have screenings on May 25, making it exactly forty years to the day.
 * The Other Darrin/Orwellian Retcon:
 * In the original release of The Empire Strikes Back, Palpatine was portrayed by Elaine Baker (sort of: her appearance was superimposed with that of a Chimpanzee's eyes, and her voice, similar to that of Darth Vader's actor, would be dubbed over by Clive Revill). The DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Empire Strikes Back would replace her with Ian McDiarmid.
 * Likewise, Boba Fett's voice was changed from Jason Wingreen's voice to Temuera Morrison's voice in the original trilogy's first DVD release to reflect Boba's status as a clone of his father, Jango Fett.
 * Promoted Fanboy: Nearly two generations have grown up with Star Wars, so almost anyone working on modern projects is one of these.
 * Real Life Relative: Wedge Antilles's actor (Denis Lawson) is the uncle of Ewan McGregor, who plays Obi-Wan. Famously he tried to talk his nephew out of the role, fearing that, like his own career, McGregor would meet with early success and then a nosedive. He was wrong and this was actually McGregor's breakout role, and Lawson has had a mild resurgence himself on British TV.
 * Refitted for Sequel: Considering the immensity of the Star Wars universe, a lot of ideas get recycled. A New Hope was to feature a ground battle at the Rebel base on Yavin, which was later adapted to the Battle of Endor (a similar forested planetoid) in Return of the Jedi.
 * Sleeper Hit: Nobody expected Star Wars to be as popular as it is today.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * Word of God stated that Obi Wan Kenobi was originally written for Toshiro Mifune, veteran of Akira Kurosawa classics like Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai; this was a reverent way to directly pay tribute to the Samurai films that Star Wars was adapted from.
 * Many things were considered over the years, considering the vastness of the franchise. A major thing to consider is that George Lucas originally wanted to serve as a mere supervisor as nine films were made under different directors, and looking forward to seeing how the franchise evolved with different people Running the Asylum. As things continued on (possibly due to a disasterous incident of "leaving it in someone elses hand"), he took more direct control of The Verse. The more recent Star Wars television productions seem to be him trying to salvage what was left of that original intent.
 * In the Leigh Brackett first draft script of The Empire Strikes Back, Vader and Anakin were two separate people; Anakin showed up to Luke as a kindly Force Ghost. Also, Luke's twin sister was not Leia but someone else, a girl called Nellith who was mentioned but never seen, in an obvious Sequel Hook.
 * The basic story of the original trilogy was intended as a single movie, beginning with the hero's journey to become a Jedi and ending with the defeat of the Empire with the destruction of the Death Star. Realizing how immense that project would be, Lucas opted to not tell the defeat of the Empire in a single movie but keep the destruction of the Death Star (which is why the Death Star II came into play as well as another forest planet being involved). Lucas also coalesced the backstory notes into what became the foundation for the prequel trilogy, deciding that an entire trilogy happened before the original films. In each trilogy, the story grew far beyond the original intention.
 * Much of this is covered in Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, which painstakingly goes over documentation from the very earliest days of the project to show how Lucas developed and transformed his original vision, especially the idea that Luke's father and Darth Vader were two different people.
 * According to George Lucas, the whole series was supposed to have a Framing Story with R2-D2, the last surviving member of the main cast, telling an advanced future race about the fall of the Republic and the rise and defeat of the Empire.
 * A New Hope was originally going to be released around Christmas 1976 (much like how Episode VII is going to be released in December of 2015), but was pushed to May of 1977.
 * Word of God:
 * Lucas long argued that the prequel's story existed in some form or another from the beginning of the saga, as the films featured the subtitles, Episode IV-VI (although the subtitle "Episode IV" wasn't in the first Star Wars film until its 1981 video re-release). A New Hope and a few elements of the original trilogy also make slightly more sense when seen against the backstory in the prequels, though others are more complicated.
 * Another notable example is Chewbacca's not getting a medal at the end of A New Hope. The official explanation is that such things are against the Wookiee religion -- except that the original official explanation, from the Official Star Wars Fan Club, was that he did get one but Leia wasn't tall enough to put it around his neck.
 * Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Sort of. Lucas did have an over all Myth Arc plotted out, but as the production of the films went on the story grew more and more. The version we know is hardly anything like the original story Lucas planned.

Miscellaneous Trivia:

 * The Star Wars Expanded Universe can be very weird, but the Jedi Prince cycle really takes the biscuit. The Glove Of Darth Vader has Luke Skywalker on a quest to save the whales. The Empire is hunting whales and during the course of this one of them discovers the titular glove. The "save the whales" message is handled with all the subtlety you'd expect. The sequel features a location called Mount Yoda, which sounds like an instruction that might be given in a particularly bad Slash Fic. Other gems include the Tatooine Retirement Home for Aged Aliens and Han and Leia's wedding at which she turns out to be a fembot a la Austin Powers planted by the rebellion to assassinate the Big Bad.
 * The books also feature Triclops, the emperor's crazy three-eyed son, versus Trioculus, the evil three-eyed impostor. And that's not even touching the mofference, or the line "I bid you Dark Greetings!" Or the unintentionally hilarious comic-book sound effects used in lieu of description. Even the dullest read could be sent into laugh-out-loud territory with this. When a scene is set up to prove how cruel and ruthless the BBEG is by shooting one of his lieutenants, "ZAP!" kind of detracts.
 * They've done some industrial-strength Retcon to fit it in. Notably the events don't take place over the five years the authors originally proposed, but over a single year, and are described as being of little importance. The Empire of Jedi Prince, the Moffs having their Mofference on the Moffship and all, were just another faction of many trying to overthrow Isard.
 * Wookieepedia really adopted the name "Mofferences" for its periodic IRC meetings, exactly because it was found to be So Bad It's Good. It's even customary to begin the meeting with "I bid you all Dark Greetings!", which is itself spoofed, like here or here.
 * There are two major fan organizations of cosplayers - the 501st Legion, aka "Vader's Fist", is composed of people who make and wear the various "villain" costumes. They take letter-number designations, the letters reflecting their costumes - someone who wore a stormtrooper costume would take the prefix "TK", for example. In reaction to the 501st, the Rebel Legion was formed. There is significant overlap between the two, and they're the next thing to professional in keeping standards.
 * The Star Wars Expanded Universe has reverse-Defictionalized the 501st. Timothy Zahn, whose Imperials are basically a Badass Army, has used them in Survivor's Quest and Allegiance, where they are Vader's personal legion, the best of the best, possibly the only suboordinates he values. The clones who invaded the Jedi Temple with pre-Mustafar Darth Vader were in the 501st. Perhaps most flattering of all, Star Wars Battlefront II reveals that almost every Clone Trooper and Stormtrooper in the Star Wars movies, from Geonosis to Hoth, is a member of the 501st.
 * The Star Wars: Clone Wars series actually covers the formation of the unit, even if only by mention.
 * They are also mentioned in The Force Unleashed.
 * The infamous "Hello Kitty Vader" is actually a photoshop of a 501st member's white Vader.
 * In Outbound Flight, there is a female Chiss admiral in white whose name is Ar'alani. A few years before the book was written, Zahn met and eventually became friends with a fangirl named Ari Roselani. When they met, Roselani was cosplaying as Mitth'raw'nuruodo (better known as Thrawn), a male Chiss admiral in white.
 * Noriyoshi Ohrai's poster designs for the promotion of the movies in Japan are so popular that other countries have adopted the same design.
 * Animator Nelson Shin (who would later become the executive producer of the original Transformers cartoon and found AKOM) was the creator of the famous Lightsaber effect for the first film. Later films have it done in-house at ILM.