Help!/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Fake Nationality/Fauxreigner: All the cultists from 'the East' are played by English actors. This is Lampshaded when the Beatles visit the Indian Restaurant "seeking enlightenment as to rings" from someone from "the mystic East" but quickly learn that everyone working there is English.

Ringo: He's from the West!
Restaurant Host: No, the East... Stepney.

  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Old Shame: John Lennon hated this film when he looked back on it. In fact, the band as a whole wasn't too fond of the end product.
  • Reality Subtext: Paul says to Ringo "Well, you didn't miss your tonsils, did you?", referencing the fact that Ringo had a tonsillectomy earlier that year.
  • Throw It In: Part of the "Ticket to Ride" sequence, which the directors considered beautiful, was marred by the presence of telegraph poles in the background. Attempts at removing them failed...and then someone had the idea of superimposing musical notes over the wires in time with "I think I'm going to be sad..."
  • What Could Have Been: Footage for a few deleted scenes has been floating around. One of the most prominent ones is for a scene in which the Beatles attend The Sam Ahab School of Transcendental Elocution. While there, they, Sam Ahab, and another student known as "Lady Macbeth" are hypnotized by the cult's "Go to the Window" music, except for George, who was wearing earplugs. They try to chop off Ringo's hand while most of the room is in a trance, but George knocks the axe (!!!) they were using out of their hands and into a mirror. The cult flees and everyone wakes up to see the axe left behind. The scene ends with John removing the axe and asking Lady Macbeth "Is this a chopper that you see before you?". This scene would have explained why Ringo withdrew his hand so quickly the next time they tried to cut it off, as well as how the boys knew to plug their ears in the Scotland Yard scene.