Trivia for
Serenity (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• When the Operative reviews Mal's file, it shows his birth date as 9/20/2468. 9/20/2002 is the day "Firefly" (2002) premiered. Coincidentally, 9/20/1968 is "Firefly" writer/producer Ben Edlund's date of birth.
  
  
• Although only a portion of the animated "Fruity Oaty Bar" commercial is visible in the movie, it was produced in its entirety and is visible as an "Easter Egg" on the DVD. Joss Whedon wanted the commercial to be as odd as possible and admits on the DVD that it is heavily inspired by the "Mr. Sparkle" advertisement from "The Simpsons" (1989) episode "In Marge We Trust." The uncredited actor shown in the commercial and in the Easter Egg segment is Robert Michael Lee.
  
  
• According to Adam Baldwin, the mini-gun his character Jayne uses at the end of the film is nicknamed "Lux", after the message board handle (LuxLucre) of devoted fan Kerry Pearson. Pearson, who died of complications from diabetes, was best known for creating fan art that featured the characters from "Firefly" (2002) in a "South Park" (1997) cartoon style.
  
  

• There is an inside joke printed on some of the crates in the cargo bay. Some of the crates have the message "Reusable Container: Do Not Destroy" printed on them (they are visible behind River after the Reaver has been shot). The original set for the ship, from the show "Firefly" (2002) was destroyed (even though creator Joss Whedon swore he'd make use of it again), and therefore could not be reused for the movie (the set had to be rebuilt from scratch).
  
  
• Fanty and Mingo are named for the pair of mafia thugs from Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo (1955).
  
  
• Universal Studios took the unusual step of allowing early previews of the unfinished film. The first early preview was in November 2004 in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles CA, when the release date for the film was still early 2005. The 5 May 2005 previews were held in 10 cities, the 26 May 2005 previews were held in 20 cities, and the 23 June 2005 previews were held in 35 cities. An early preview was also held on the Gold Coast, Qld, Australia on Friday 22 July 2005.
  
  
• Two wrecked ships are shown with the registration numbers C57D, a reference to Forbidden Planet (1956) put in by the graphic designer, Geoffrey Mandel. Jayne points out the first one as they explore. The second is the rescue ship, the source of the beacon. Writer/Director Joss Whedon says in the DVD commentary that the name of the world, Miranda, was taken from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, where it is the name of a character who says, "O brave new world that has such people in't!" Forbidden Planet was loosely based on The Tempest.
  
  
• When the crew first arrives on Haven, Jayne is strumming the "Ballad of Serenity" (the "Firefly" (2002) theme) on the guitar.
  
  
• This is the first film to be released by Universal on HD-DVD (High Definition DVD).
  
  
• A coffee maker seen in Serenity's dining room/kitchen is an F.A. Porsche Design coffee maker made by Siemens.
  
  
• The futuristic-looking handcuffs used on River are in fact Clejuso Number 13s, the second heaviest handcuffs currently in production.
  
  
• EASTER EGG: From the main menu screen, keep clicking "left" until you light up a triangle with a dot in the center on the right side of the screen. This icon will take you to the full Fruity Oaty Bar commercial.
  
  
• Malcolm's Social Control number is 099,836,5,4112.
  
  
• The keyboard Mal uses to transmit the signal from Mr. Universe's basement is a Micro Innovations Web Office Pro Keyboard.
  
  
• One of the video clips playing on the monitors in Mr Universe's base is the Blue Sun commercial from the "Firefly" (2002) episode "The Message".
  
  
• This is the first film for which a digital cinema distribution master was made using the new DCI standards using JPEG2000 compression and a 12 bit 4:4:4 XYZ color space.
  
  
• The cannon the crew mounts to Serenity is a WW2 German 20mm Flak 38.
  
  
• Among the buildings shown in the opening sequence (where voice-over narration describes the "terraforming" process) are the Emirates Towers, key features of the skyline of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. A skyscraper in the foreground of the same shot is based on designs by Sir Norman Foster (Lord Foster), including the Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt and the HSBC building in Hong Kong.
  
  
• Morena Baccarin provides the voice ("Parliamentary override. Full access.") for the security terminal in the records room.
  
  
• The key phrase, that Dr. Simon Tam uttered to put River to sleep, "Eta Kooram Nah Smech!" in Russian means literally "this is for hens to laugh", meaning "this is very ridiculous".(presumably also as it is so random a sentence as to never be spoken by accident)
  
  
• Wash's jacket has a Leonov mission patch from 2010 (1984) on one arm, and a real-world Russian Intercosmos patch on the other.
  
  
• Concept art for the film reveals that many of the weapons are based on the design of paintball markers. They include such paintball-specific touches as the propellant tank mount point at the bottom of the rear grip, and an "expansion chamber"-style fore grip.
  
  
• The DVD of Serenity was flown up to the International Space Station by astronaut Steven Swanson on board the shuttle Atlantis during it's June 2007 STS-117 mission.
  
  
• Mal's drink of choice, Ng Ka Py, is a Chinese brandy. It is seen in the film in his quarters, and it is also the drink he calls for in the bar in the first scene of "The Train Job" in "Firefly" (2002).
  
  
• Summer Glau has said that she pitched to Joss Whedon the idea of her character River becoming a pilot during the "Firefly" (2002) television series. In this film, River finally becomes co-pilot of Serenity.
  
  
• The original "Firefly" (2002) title theme is played at the end of the closing credits, in a guitar-only version.
  
  
• The cast had a running gag where they would yell Summer Glau's name whenever she flubbed a line or forgot to do something. It originated on "Firefly" (2002) when she forgot her line at the end of a very long and difficult scene.
  
  
• Body count: 74
  
  
• After they find the first body that's been dead without injuries in the white city you can see a strange kind of stairs with a ramp through it. This is an exact copy of the stairs at the Robson Square in Vancouver, Canada designed by Arthur Erickson.
  
  
• Once Simon has put River to sleep in the bar, on the floor next to her can clearly be seen an Earth Aliance PPG from the series "Babylon 5" (1994).
  
  
• This is Joss Whedon's feature film directorial debut
  
  
• Several of the Reaver ships seen in the final battle are of the same type as some of the Alliance ships with different paint schemes.
  
  
• The "Trans-U" Reaver ship that attacked Serenity in the pilot episode of Firefly is visible to the lower left of Serenity as the Reaver fleet emerges from the ion cloud.
  
  
• In his commentary on the DVD, Joss Whedon made specific mention that Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau and Sean Maher all performed many of their own stunts. Summer Glau, in reality a trained dancer, used her dancing skills in River's two fights - for the second, the cameraman, who was also a dancer, moved through a gap around the combatants in order to achieve the dynamic camera angles which appear in the movie.
  
  
• The poem Mal refers to is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the poem the Mariner shoots down an albatross, which causes the death of his crew and the destruction of his ship.
  
  
• According to the director commentary, Mal's line "Faster would be better" was ad-libbed by Nathan Fillion when Joss Whedon told him to "say something Mal would say."
  
  
• On Miranda, when the crew discovers the dead citizens in the sealed room, right before River starts talking in Chinese, there's a body of an old man in a lab coat wearing golden shoes. The shoes he is wearing are Nike Flightposite III, basketball shoes designed for Kevin Garnett, introduced around 2001.
  
  
• Though the Trade Agent (the elderly man in the Trade Station who unlocks the safe) is played by Weston Nathanson, his voice was dubbed by Joss Whedon. According to Whedon, several of the stand-in voices from the early post-production stage remain in the final film, among them this and Morena Baccarin's voice as the computer at the beginning of the film.
  
  
• The events in Serenity take place six months after the last episode in "Firefly" entitled "Objects in Space." A three-issue comic book series (published by Dark Horse comics and written by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews), released during the summer of 2005 bridged that six-month time period.
  
  
• The first nine minutes of Serenity were made available online as a promotion in advance of its theatrical release. Between the online release and the theatrical release, the brief cut to Alliance security personnel was changed from blue to red.
  
  
• Ranked #5 in Rotten Tomatoes "50 Best TV Adaptations of All Time"
  
  
• Though she did say all the lines, the actress that plays young River was dubbed over by Summer Glau to make the connection easier.
  
  
• In addition to Book's Christianity, which was established during the series, the film shows that in the "future," people also still follow traditions of Buddhism (Inara lights "incense" in front of a Buddha shrine in her room) and Judaism (Mr. Universe steps on a glass at the end of his wedding ceremony).
  
  
• According to visual effects supervisor Loni Peristere, the Reaver ships are conceived along the lines of "muscle cars that look like Leatherface," each representing a mask the Reavers wear. [Paste Magazine interview, October 4, 2005]
  
  
• The rampaging dinosaur cartoon seen in the center of Mr. Universe's display is footage from Max & Dave Fleischer's The Arctic Giant (1942), the superlative Superman animated short film from 1942.
  
  
• According to commentary, the crew made a mistake when building the mule hovercraft seen during the first chase sequence with the Reavers at the opening of the film. Zoe, Mal, Jayne, and River were all riding in the mule during the chase. In dialogue, when Zoe asks Mal why he didn't save the man who begged them to take him with them during their escape, Mal responded that "The mule won't run with five". The production crew had accidentally built the mule with five seats, an initial oversight.
  
  
• After Mr. Universe betrays the crew, he tells the Operative to "toss him his 30 coin" for it. In the Biblical story, Judas betrays Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Whether the allusion is being made by the character intentionally, or if that is his actual payment and the allusion is the filmmakers', is unclear.
  
  

• SPOILER: According to the Q&A; with Joss Whedon and the cast after the premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, there were at least 20 separate takes of the final make-out scene between Simon and Kaylee in the engine room, with take #20 being the one used in the final cut.
  
  
• SPOILER: During the funeral scene, Kaylee wears a medallion with the doubled Chinese character for joy/happiness/cheer, a symbol often used in weddings.
  
  
• SPOILER: According to Joss Whedon in his commentary, the most difficult scene to get the sound right was the scene between Simon and River at the end, after Simon had been shot. Whedon says that the bond formed between Sean Maher and Summer Glau over the course of the shooting of Firefly was so strong, and Sean's acting so good, that Summer kept bursting into tears whenever they attempted to shoot the scene.
  
  
• SPOILER: On the 2-disc cast commentary, Joss Whedon says that the discovery of the planet Miranda would have occurred at the end of the second season if the show had been a success.
  
  

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