Titanic/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Beam Me Up, Scotty: Rose asks Jack to "draw [her] like one of [his] French girls", not "paint her". For some reason, the latter is starting to show up frequently these days.
  • Cast the Expert: All the crew aboard the research ship and its submarine are, well, actual research-ship-and-submarine crewmembers. Cameron hired the Akademic Mstislav Keldysh to visit the wreck, and kept them on payroll for use as set and extras once the production phase started.
  • The Danza: Lewis Abernathy, who is not an actor but a friend of James Cameron, plays Lewis Bodine.
  • Dawson Casting:
    • Kate Winslet (21 during the filming) was portraying a seventeen-year-old.
    • Very unfortunately for posterity, Jack Dawson doesn't quite fall into the Dawson Casting range. The character was envisioned as 20 years old; DiCaprio was 22 years old at the time of filming.
  • Deleted Scenes: An hour's worth of deleted material can be found on the blu-ray.
    • Returning to her room after dinner, Rose freaks out and starts smashing everything before running to the stern.
    • Rose entering Third Class the day after her suicide attempt to find Jack.
    • After the party in Third Class, Jack and Rose sing "Come, Josephine" on their way back to First Class.
    • On Sunday morning, Thomas Andrews shows Cal, Ruth, and Rose the gymnasium as part of their tour of the ship. Cal fiddles with the rowing workout, while Ruth says "she doesn't believe she would ever need to use that." On their way out, Rose punches a large punching bag. After that, Tommy and Fabrizio help Jack sneak into First Class.
    • The wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride are backlogged in their work, only to hear the Californian messaging them warning about the ice field the Titanic is about to steam into. They tell him to shut up.
    • Rose telling Jack Lovejoy's backstory and kissing Jack in the boiler room while running away from him.
    • The death of Assistant Engineer Jonathan Shepherd, the historical "first victim" of the Titanic sinking, when he broke his leg and asked to be left behind in a flooding room so others could survive.
    • After receiving the order to send out the distress call CQD, Harold Bride suggests to Jack Phillips that they use the new distress call SOS. "It might be [their] only chance to use it." (In some countries, this scene made it into the theatrical version.)
    • Additional scenes in Lifeboat Six, with Molly Brown giving Frederick Fleet advice on how to row and Captain Smith calling out to them to return for more passengers.
    • John Jacob Astor showing his wife what's inside a life jacket by cutting it with a knife in the gym, and the gym manager saying that he doesn't need a jacket because it will limit his stroke.
    • Jack and Rose being given sheets and whiskey by a steerage couple.
    • Fabrizio has his own romantic subplot with Helga, a Norwegian third-class immigrant. She refuses to leave her parents when Fabrizio, Rose, Jack and Tommy go looking for another exit and perishes with her family.
    • Right after chasing Jack and Rose into the First Class Saloon, Cal offers the diamond to Lovejoy, who then calmly stalks them in the flooded room before Jack subdues him. This is the reason Lovejoy is bloodied when the ship breaks apart.
    • Ida Strauss refusing to board a boat without her husband (they are the old couple seen on a bed as water rushes in).
    • Captain Smith calling for Molly Brown's boat to come back and pick more survivors, only for Quartermaster Hichens to overrule it.
    • The first class dogs running free over the sinking ship's decks.
    • Phillips radioing for help while the water rushes in, until Bride puts a life jacket on him and forces him out.
    • Many scenes of the sinking in and around the Grand Staircase.
    • Cora and her family trapped bellow decks and drowning, ostensibly cut because it was rather painful to watch.
    • John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim say good-bye to each other, before the former continues looking for his dog so he won't die alone.
    • A French bulldog swimming past Jack and Rose.
    • Jack talking another survivor from getting on Rose's wooden platform.
    • While unloading the women from his boat before picking up survivors, Fifth Officer Lowe discovers one of his passengers is a young man disguised as a woman.
    • A Chinese passenger being pulled out of the water alive by the returning lifeboat.
    • The Carpathia sequence was originally longer. Prior to the rescue, we have a shot of Lightoller and the men on Collapsible B, the overturned boat. Ismay is shown receiving a "walk of shame" aboard the Carpathia while Lowe personally hands Rose a coffee. Cal confusing another steerage woman with Rose.
    • Old Rose stopping her tale and being pulled away to rest, and expanding on Cal's fate (his sons fought each other for his remaining assets "like hyenas").
    • This is a James Cameron film. So the final film's 3 hours long. There is an hour of deleted footage and another hour worth of script that was never filmed. Among it, an entirely unrelated subplot about Real Life early film pioneer Daniel Marvin, his wife Mary and his new-brand camera all aboard the Titanic.
  • Doing It for the Art: The film went over budget and over schedule, Cameron forfeited his salary to make sure he could continue. Not to mention the extensive amounts of research and detail the production team put into making the film.
  • Enforced Method Acting: The water during filming was deliberately cold, so Leo shouting "Oh shit, this is cold!" is real as well as Kate's gasp when she gets chest-deep in the water. The scene where Jack and Rose are swept away by a rush of water in the hallway is also real.
  • Fake American: Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater.
  • Fake Irish: Victor Garber (Jewish Canadian) as Belfastman Thomas Andrews.
  • Font Anachronism: The film features Helvetica on some of the gauges on the ship. Titanic takes place in 1912. Helvetica is invented 45 years later.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Plenty of faces.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: The echo-ey singing voice heard throughout the movie is the Swedish voice of Ariel.
  • Life Imitates Art: In one of the deleted scenes, Brock's manager Bobby tells him that they're over-budget, the partners depending on them are pissed, and especially that the hand is on the plug. Jim Cameron later noted that when he was writing this, he had no idea he would be hearing all these things when the production ran into problems.
  • Meaningful Release Date: The 3D re-release was timed to correspond to the centenary of the sinking in 2012. It released on April 6th, four days before the Titanic set sail - most likely to avoid a midweek release, and to capitalize on Easter weekend crowds.
  • Science Marches On: A study commissioned by Cameron for the 100th anniversary of the sinking indicates that the stern probably did not tilt up much more than 20 degrees, as opposed to the near 90-degree headstand depicted in the film.
  • Star Making Roles: For both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
  • Throw It In:
    • Jack telling Rose to lie "Over on the bed— uh, the couch." was entirely accidental, but James Cameron thought that was natural, so he left it in. You can see DiCaprio almost swearing to himself, thinking he's ruined the take, but it comes off as a nervous 20-year-old thinking how much he just embarrassed himself in front of the girl he loves.
    • Apparently Leonardo didn't know how cold the water was when he jumped into it...thus the line "Oh shit, this is cold!"
  • Troubled Production: Over budget, behind schedule, anyone that could get injured and/or sick did so (Kate Winslet even said she only works with James Cameron again for a lot of money!), a disgruntled crew member drugged the night soup...
  • What Could Have Been: Like Avatar, this was written as a 4 hour-long movie and cut down to a 3 hour-long film.
    • Cameron originally wanted Drew Barrymore to play Rose, but execs told him that she wouldn't be right for the role.
    • Johnny Depp also admitted in an interview that he was offered the lead role in the movie but turned it down, and considers it a big regret.
    • Cameron offered the role of Old Rose to Fay Wray, who turned it down thinking it would have been "a tortuous experience altogether."
    • The role of Molly Brown was originally going to go to Reba McEntire, who had to drop out due to her tour schedule.
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