14 Hidden Movie Details That Can Captivate Even the Most Observant Viewer

Watching a movie is an immersive experience in a world where thousands of things can happen in a matter of seconds. Most times when watching a great film we focus on the events of the story and we leave out some details that don’t necessarily catch our attention. For example why, in Finding Nemo, was Gill the only fish that was always thinking about escaping from the fish tank. Nor did we question why in X-Men, Magneto could smash and shake furniture, but could not move a small metal coin. Today, we’ll tell you the reasons behind these mysteries and more.

Bright Side wants you to know some details that made our favorite movies even more interesting than they were before.

1. Professor X’s watch in Dark Phoenix

You might recall that in the movie X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) there is a scene where you can see Professor X talking to Magneto. If you look closely, he is wearing a Rolex Milgauss around his wrist. This watch is actually known for resisting magnetic fields up to 1000 gauss (hence the name), a unit used to measure magnetic fields. And while the watch was first designed and created in 1956, this Rolex is still available today, which will hardly come as a surprise if it’s really that resistant.

2. Chief Bogo’s glasses in Zootopia

Not sure if you remember, but in a scene from Zootopia, the head of police, Chief Bogo who’s a buffalo, is wearing glasses when he is reading documents. This small detail is a reference to a fun fact from buffaloes, which, in real life, have poor eyesight.

3. John Wick’s watch in John Wick

There are a few scenes in John Wick where you can clearly see that the protagonist is wearing a watch just like any other person normally would. However, upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that during the action scenes, or right after them, the watch has changed position. Instead of wearing it outward, John Wick wears it facing his own body. Some people believe that soldiers wear their watches this way because it allows them to be more discreet and prevents light from reflecting off the glass of the device, which would automatically give away their location.

4. The planets in Hercules

In a scene from Hercules, the Moirae, goddesses of destiny, show Hades how the planets will be aligned in the future. And even though we can only see 6 of them, don’t think this was a mistake from Disney producers. They did this on purpose because back in the day, ancient Greek astronomy would only study 5 planets, besides Earth. They could only see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

5. Why Moana’s people stop exploring in Moana

In Moana, the main character’s mentor, and grandmother, mentions that their people stopped setting sail to explore the world like they used to a long time ago. She’s actually referring to an event that occurred in real life, which in Polynesian history is often known as “The Long Pause.” To this day it’s still not known why The Long Pause occurred.

6. Why King Louie is a different species in The Jungle Book

In the 2016 movie The Jungle Book, King Louie is not an orangutan like he used to be in the animated feature. In the live-action film, you see him as a Gigantopithecus, a huge predecessor species of gorillas, whose specimens were very similar to modern orangutans. The reason why producers decided to make this change was that orangutans are not endemic to India, so it didn’t fit the story. On the other hand, it is believed that the Gigantopithecus did inhabit parts of that country, where the story is supposed to take place. In addition, the appearance of this species helps to give the character a monarch-like appearance.

7. Why, in Up, only Dug can find Kevin

You probably remember that in the movie Up, Dug is the only dog that can actually track Kevin. That’s because all the other members of the pack are guard dogs. Dug, on the other hand, is a golden retriever, which is a hunting hound capable of tracking. And while this breed is known for being friendly and gentle, they’ve helped humans for centuries thanks to their acute sense of smell.

8. Why Peter B.’s skeleton in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse won’t light up

In many movies or TV series, when a character gets electrocuted you see that electricity running through his or her skeleton. However, there’s a scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse where instead of seeing that, something strange happens. Miles electrocutes Peter B. Parker, but somehow the electricity runs through his nervous system instead of his skeleton.

Maybe this interpretation of electricity in the body is due to the fact that the nervous system of the human body is responsible for conducting electrical signals.

9. Why Magneto can’t move the coin in X-Men: First Class

In X-Men: First Class, you meet a young Magneto before he becomes the evil enemy of Professor X. There’s a scene in the movie where he is forced to use his powers to move a 5 Reichsmark coin but he can’t move it. This part of the movie is very confusing because it’s not very likely that what is supposed to be a super-strong character can’t move a small coin. However, it’s important to remember that Reichmarks were made of silver, a very non-magnetic material. Considering that silver has this property, suddenly everything makes more sense, especially since he was just starting to discover his true potential.

10. The strategy game in Tron: Legacy

You probably remember that in Tron: Legacy, Quorra is part of a computer program. She mentions to Sam that she has a hard time beating her father at what seems to be some futuristic strategy game. However, it’s actually a Chinese board game called go, which is quite complex for computers to run.

In fact, it’s so complex that it wasn’t until 2016 that a computer program was able to beat a world go champion. We can’t be sure, but it seems like Quorra was not doing so well because it took computers a long time to beat a human in a match of this board game.

11. Why the Genie in Aladdin writes “backward”

In the animated movie Aladdin, there a scene where the Genie is writing his master’s order on a notepad. If you take a closer look, he’s actually writing from right to left. Because a song called Arabian Nights is heard in the movie and it’s inspired by a story from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, it is thought that the story takes place in Arabia or a similar place. So the character is actually using the correct form of writing in Arabic.

12. The equation that can’t be solved in Bedazzled

In the movie Bedazzled, Elizabeth Hurley, otherwise known as “the Devil” in the movie, disguises herself as a stereotypical teacher only to erase a mathematical equation from the blackboard. But in case you hadn’t noticed, what she’s erasing is Fermat’s last theorem, one of the most famous theorems for its great difficulty and one of the equations with the most failed attempts to be solved.

13. Maui’s magic hook in Moana

In Moana, when Maui changes shape, you can always still see his magic hook somewhere on the body of the animal or being that he transformed himself into.

14. Why Gill always wants to escape in Finding Nemo

Gill from Finding Nemo belongs to a fish species known as a Moorish idol, officially named Zanclus cornutus. This tropical species is known for not adapting easily to controlled environments or small places, like fish tanks. That’s why Gill is always devising anxiety-filled escape plans—he just wants to return to his natural habitat.

What’s the strangest detail you have noticed in a film?