2000 Amazing Stranger Things Facts E-Book

Joe Everson

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The ultimate book for all Stranger Things superfans - with trivia about fashions, actors and actresses, influences, the eighties, monsters, locations, crew, music, food, technology, and many other facts about the world of Stranger Things. 2000 Amazing Stranger Things Facts contains all you could ever wish to know about this amazingly popular Netflix show.

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2000 Amazing Stranger Things Facts

Joe Everson© Copyright 2021 Joe Everson

ContentsIntroductionThe FactsIntroductionThe ultimate book for all Stranger Things superfans! 2000 Amazing Stranger Things Facts contains all you could ever wish to know about this amazingly popular Netflix show.The Facts(1) Stranger Things was originally titled Montauk. Montauk is a hamlet at the east end of the Long Island peninsula and famed for its beaches. Ross and Matt Duffer, the brothers who created Stranger Things, were very inspired by Steven Spielberg's classic movie Jaws in their early plans for the show. "Jaws was our favorite movie of all time," said Matt Duffer, "so we liked the sort of coastal setting that allowed, but for production reasons it started to look more and more unfeasible."(2) One of the main reasons why the show was originally going to be set in Montauk is Camp Hero. Camp Hero (aka Montauk Air Force Station) is an abandoned military base in Montauk which gave rise to all manner of conspiracy theories. It was alleged in a book called The Montauk Project that Camp Hero used kidnapped children in experiments which included telekinesis and time travel. Most of the conspiracy theories involving Montauk are obviously considered to be fiction but the Duffers felt Camp Hero (with its many urban legends and alleged secrets) would be a great backdrop for a sci-fi fantasy horror show.(3) Some of the music score from the cult 1988 movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space can be heard when Dustin's toys come to life in the first episode of season three.(4) Nancy Wheeler has a Debbie Harry calender in her room in season one. Debbie Harry was the lead singer of Blondie.(5) Steve Harrington was originally going to be much nastier in the original plan for Stranger Things. The character was conceived as a very disposable and unlikeable villain who would be killed off by the end of the first season. It was the easygoing comic charisma of actor Joe Keery that made the Duffer Brothers radically alter the fate of Steve Harrington. Steve was given a redemptive arc, softened, and then became a main character (as opposed to a supporting villain).(6) The watch that Max wears in season two is a Swatch Yellow Racer.(7) In the first episode of Stranger Things 3, the kids are surreptitiously smuggled into the Starcourt Mall cinema by Steve to watch a horror movie. The movie is then interrupted by a power failure in Hawkins. The film playing is 1985's Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead was the conclusion of George A Romero's famous zombie trilogy and followed on from Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). This series of films was a huge influence on both the comic book and television version of The Walking Dead. The specific scene that plays in the mall cinema before the power failure is the beginning of the movie when the heroine Sarah (Lori Cardelle) is suffering from nightmares and dreams of zombie hands smashing through a wall.(8) Stranger Things never divulges where exactly in Indiana the town of Hawkins is supposed to be. One of the spin-off novels seems to suggest it is near Bloomington.(9) Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler has more lines in season one than any other character has in any season of Stranger Things.(10) Dacre Montgomery improvised the moment in The Sauna Test where Billy head-butts the glass in the sauna. You can see the kids are genuinely surprised by this in their reactions.(11) Joyce Byers buying Will an Atari for Christmas in season one is quite clever. Some fans wondered how Joyce could afford such a gift but there was a video game crash in that era which them much more affordable.(12) In season two, Eleven secretly lives with Hopper in his cabin in the woods. She only opens the door if Hopper uses a very specific sequence of knocking. In morse code, Hopper's knock is ••—/••• (which means 'us').(13) It has been suggested that the three main teen characters in season one of Stranger Things - Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve -  are a deliberate parallel to the three teen characters in the 1986 John Hughes film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Steve is the cool Ferris, Jonathan is the moody and complex Cameron, and Nancy is the hip Sloane Peterson. There are a few obvious flaws in this theory - like the fact that Steve was supposed to be a villain (in season one of Stranger Things at least). Natalia Dyer does though have an uncanny resemble to Mia Sara at times.(14) Starcourt Mall is really the defunct Gwinnett Place Mall in Georgia. Gwinnett Place Mall opened in 1984 but was long closed and in rather bad condition when the Stranger Things designers decided it would be perfect for their needs (it was obviously not feasible to build a gigantic mall sized set in a studio). Forty new (1985 period accurate) stores were constructed at Gwinnett Place Mall by the Stranger Things production team. Netflix leased about 20% of the mall in the end to use for Stranger Things 3. This proved more than sufficient.(15) The logo for Benny's Burgers is inspired by the logo for Benny's Billiards in the Francis Ford Coppola film Rumble Fish.(16) The Weirdo On Maple Street, as a title, is most likely a reference to The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street - a 1960 episode of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street is about ordinary suburbanites split asunder by paranoia when it suggested that aliens are among them. The Weirdo on Maple Street could also be a reference The House on Maple Street - a Stephen King story that featured in his Nightmares & Dreamscapes collection. The story is about a house that experiences a strange growth of metal and machinery.(17) In the Portuguese language version of Stranger Things, Eggo waffles are called panqueques. Panqueques means pancakes.(18) When Nancy Wheeler asks after the missing Barb Holland at school in Holly, Jolly, a poster of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven can be seen. This is a visual clue that Barb is dead.(19) A precise calculation is not really possible but it has been suggested that Eleven may have killed up to twenty people in the initial three seasons of Stranger Things.(20) Among the more obvious visual inspirations for the Upside Down are the nightmare planet LV-426 in Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens. You could equally mention Planet of the Vampires (aka errore nello spazio) - a 1965 Mario Bava Gothic space opera that Alien was heavily influenced by.(21) The flashback with little Billy Hargrove in season three appears to have a costume Easter egg referencing the family movie The Bad News Bears.(22) You can hear the music from the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon when Hopper and Joyce arrive at the fair in season three. The cartoon ran on CBS from 1983 to 1985.(23) In the prequel novel Stranger Things - Suspicious Minds, we learn that Eleven was named Jane after the famed English anthropologist Jane Goodall.(24) The scene at the end of The Mind Flayer when Eleven finally returns feels rather like a homage to the scene in Alien: Resurrection where Winona Ryder's android character Call is revealed again despite apparently just dying.(25) Joyce Byers in season one seems to be partly based on Barbara Hershey's character in the 80s horror film The Entity.(26) The Gravitron, a fairly new ride at the time, features at the Hawkins fair in season three. This ride wasn't enduringly popular though because it made a lot of people vomit.(27) When Jonathan Byers pieces together a potential photo of the monster in season one this is a homage to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup.(28) The snobbish girls at the Starcourt Mall in The Mall Rats who mock Max and Eleven are the same girls who rejected Dustin when he wanted someone to dance with in the season two finale.(29) Eleven uses her powers to make the Orange Julius drink of one of the snobby girls at the Starcourt Mall explode. Orange Julius is a business that is around one hundred years old. Their orange drink is traditionally composed of orange juice, vanilla, ice, milk, and egg whites. One would imagine a vegan version is available today.(30) It doesn't appear to be a coincidence that in season two, when she is living in the woods, Eleven wears a hunting hat similar to the one worn by Holden Caulfield in JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Holden has a fantasy of saving children in a field of rye from falling over a cliff. In season two of Stranger Things, Eleven has her own mission - of sorts - to save children from the government lab.(31) The Duffers suffered over a dozen rejections when they tried to pitch Montauk (eventually to become Stranger Things) in the entertainment industry. The Duffers later said that what seemed to put people off was the fact that this proposed show had some children as major characters. Network executives obviously didn't think this concept would work.(32) The Duffers found that Eleven was the hardest character to cast in season one. The main reason for this is that child actors often find it hard to stay in character when they don't have any dialogue and have to remain silent. The Duffers saw that Millie Bobby Brown was clearly able to sustain the same level of focus at all times - even with the minimal dialogue of Eleven.(33) Project MKUltra features heavily in the story of season one. From 1953 to 1973, the CIA funded experiments in order to learn how to control people for the purposes of spying. These experiments were designed to see if the human mind could be altered or controlled. The psychedelic drug LSD was a big part of the experiments and sensory deprivation chambers were used. The origins of the project are thought to have come from a fear that the Soviet Union was much more advanced in brainwashing techniques. This was a sphere of the Cold War that America was apparently losing and so was born (after several similar if smaller projects) MKUltra. For the CIA, the worst-case scenario was that the Soviet Union could find a way to mindcontrol US military and intelligence officials. It all sounds somewhat crazy but experiments in psychological techniques were very real. The experiments included attempts to 'remote control' people for the purposes of manipulating agents in the field through electrical brain triggers.(34) Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp became best friends through Stranger Things but - much to their frustration - their characters Eleven and Will Byers barely say a word to one another in the first three seasons of Stranger Things.(35) The scene in season one where Joyce and Jonathan argue in the street over her refusal to accept that Will is really dead is designed to mimic a scene in Halloween H20 where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her son John (played by Josh Harnett) argue in the street over her obsession with the dreaded killer Michael Myers.(36) Billy Hargrove's look is largely based on Randall Flagg in Stephen King's The Stand. Flagg loves a mullet, denim, and ear-rings - just like Billy.(37) The Demogorgon you see in the first season was mostly Mark Steger in a monster suit. Visual effects were used though to depict the Demogorgon in some scenes - especially the school classroom showdown between the Demogorgon and Eleven in the season one finale. The Duffer Brothers wanted to include as many practical old school effects as they could and in their concept for the Demogorgon were influenced by the creature in Ridley Scott's Alien. Alien came out in an era before CGI and achieved its iconic (not to mention terrifying) monster design by putting a tall slender actor named Bolaji Badejo in an alien suit. Through use of shadow and lighting the end effect was fantastic. There are only a few occasions in Alien where you are patently aware that the creature is a man in a monster suit.(38) In reality, the U.S Department of Energy obviously doesn't experiment with super powered children and open up dimensions to other realities. Paul Lester, who worked for the U.S Department of Energy (and is a Stranger Things fan too), wrote - 'Stranger Things depicts the Energy Department as a federal agency confronting terrifying monsters lurking in different dimensions. We don’t mess with monsters, but the Energy Department is in the business of detecting invisible dangers. Energy Department scientists throughout the country create new technologies that help prevent terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear materials. For example, Sandia National Laboratories developed a mobile scanner that can be used in shipping ports around the world to quickly detect radiological materials hidden inside massive cargo containers.'(39) At the start of Stranger Things 2, we see Dustin and the boys playing Dragon's Lair in the Palace Arcade. What we see though is not the actual game playing but merely animation that was used in advance commercials for the arcade machine.(40) Gaten Matarazzo has cleidocranial dysplasia. Cleidocranial dysplasia is a rare genetic condition that affects teeth and bones, such as the skull, face, spine, collarbones and legs. The bones in people with CCD might be formed differently or might be more fragile than normal, and certain bones such as collarbones may be absent. The condition was written into Gaten's character Dustin Henderson.(41) Ted Wheeler almost certainly seems to be based on the hapless George McFly from Back to the Future.(42) It is Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson who has the most lines in season two. Dustin has 356 lines in Stranger Things 2.(43) Millie Bobby Brown isn't a tremendous fan of Eggo waffles. She said she would much rather have some avocado toast for breakfast.(44) The Duffers think that some of the sequences in season two where Will Byers encounters a blue tinged Upside Down corridor are strangely reminiscent of the special effects in the Disney film Tron. This was an unconscious reference though as they hadn't set out to do this at all.(45) Eleven was originally supposed to be killed off for good at the end of the first season. The Duffers altered their plans when they saw how great the character was and deduced that a second season was on the cards. A second season of Stranger Things sans Eleven became inconceivable.(46) The ghostly mist engulfed town of Silent Hill in the video game and movie series was an obvious influence on the Upside Down in Stranger Things.(47) In the hospital scenes in Stranger Things 3, the medical uniforms and logos are the same as those in the 1981 horror sequel Halloween II. This is a nice little Easter egg for horror fans.(48) The sexist staff at the newspaper in Stranger Things 3 disdainfully refer to Nancy as Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew is a teen detective created in 1930. The character of Nancy Drew has appeared in numerous mystery novels and a number of films and television series.(49) The opening of Stranger Things 3, where we see a team of Soviet scientists wiped out by their attempt to drill into the Upside down, is inspired by the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazis try to open the Grail and meet a spectacular and grisly end.(50) Noah Schnapp has to wear a hairpiece in Stranger Things. In real life he obviously doesn't have a pudding bowl haircut like Will Byers.(51) At the start of Stranger Things 3, Eleven makes it appear as if Dustin's toys have come to life. One of the toys is a Transformer Ultra Magnus. One could classify this as a very mild anachronism because the Transformer Ultra Magnus was not available in the United States until 1986.(52) When Joyce consults with Mr Clarke in the third season, Mr Clarke has the song My Bologna by Weird Al Yankovic playing. My Bologna is a parody of My Sharona by The Knack - a song which you can hear in the 1994 teen drama Reality Bites. The two leads in Reality Bites were Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke (father of Stranger Things 3 star Maya Hawke). The choice of My Bologna for the Joyce/Mr Clarke scene functions then as a sort of double Easter egg.(53) Millie Bobby Brown said she always makes sure her trailer is next to Sadie Sink's trailer on the set.(54) The most spectacular sequence in season one arguably comes when Eleven uses her powers to launch the Chevy Hawkins Lab van in the air during the bike chase in The Bathtub. The first attempt to capture this stunt didn't go to plan and a camera was damaged. The Duffers had to ask Netflix for extra funds to stage the stunt again. Netflix said they were happy to do this as long as the stunt was put in the trailer for the show.(55) Dr Brenner was called Agent One in the pilot script.(56) Jonathan has a Pentax MX camera in season one. This was seen as an excellent camera in that era.(57) Because the walls in the Byers house had to be constantly destroyed or graffited in season one, the production team came up with the trick of printing the wallpaper pattern onto latex for whenever they needed a fresh wall.(58) Winona Ryder has an allergy concerning the chemicals actors commonly use to make it appear as if they are crying. She therefore had to try and dredge up real tears whenever Joyce was in an especially anguished state (which happened all the time in season one in particular).(59) Bob Newby has a JVC GR-C1 camera in Stranger Things 2. This camera famously featured in the classic film Back to the Future.(60) Jonathan Byers often has to use a darkroom in Stranger Things to develop his photographs. Younger viewers may (or may not) be puzzled by this. A darkroom is used to process photographic film, to make prints and to carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of the light-sensitive photographic materials, including film and photographic paper. When it came to taking photographs, technology was very different in the 1980s than it is today.(61) The way the Upside Down is depicted in Stranger Things owes something to how Hell is depicted in Japanese folklore and animation.(62) Dustin has been to Camp Know Where at the start of season three. Camp Nowhere is a 1994 film starring Christopher Lloyd.(63) The character name Jonathan Byers appears to be a reference to John Fitzgerald Byers. John Fitzgerald Byers was a character in The X-Files.(64) Eleven's ability to eat huge amounts of food in season one might be a sly reference to the DC Comics superhero The Flash. The Flash has to eat a lot of food to replenish the energy expended by the use of his powers.(65) The season two finale shares its title with a 1987 film called The Gate. This was plainly no coincidence. The Gate is a sci-fi horror adventure about kids who discover a portal (from which demons emerge) in their garden.(66) Max Mayfield is a proficient skateboarder and so Sadie Sink had to spend three hours a day with a skateboard instructor in preparation for the role.(67) The school in Stranger Things is really Patrick Henry High School. This school was closed in 2015 because of a mould infestation.(68) Shannon Purser said she was very touched by the positive public reaction to her character Barb Holland. "It still blows me away that she got the kind of response that she did. A lot of it, I think, is timing. I think a lot of people definitely relate to the people who are less than conventional — at least by Hollywood standards — people who are an outcast and awkward, because more often than not, we don’t feel like the cool, popular kid who had everything together in high school. Most of us have been a third wheel or have been stuck at a party we didn’t want to be at. I think there’s definitely this fondness about Barb and her situation because we’ve all been there before."(69) Because of their fondness for Sean Astin, Winona Ryder and Noah Schnapp didn't want Bob Newby to be killed in Stranger Things 2.(70) Dustin's turtle in season two is named Yertle. Yertle is a character in the 1996–1997 television series The Wubbulous World of Dr Seuss.(71) The Lost Sister's depiction of the Chicago skyline is too contemporary for 1984. The Trump International Hotel & Tower only opened in 2009 and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower was constructed in 1997.(72) Over 360,000 people binged Stranger Things 2 inside a day when it was released.(73) When the second season of Stranger Things became available on Netflix, fifteen million viewers streamed the new season inside three days.(74) Netflix began in 1997. In the early days of the company they were a DVD rental business. They began producing their own content in 2013.(75) The arcade machines in Stranger Things 2 were not authentic to 1984 because they have modern flat screens.(76) Eleven's punk makeover in Stranger Things 2 makes her look like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club - although this might be a coincidence.(77) Troy is the school bully in season one. Troy's full name is Troy Walsh according to the Hawkins year book.(78) Joe Keery was twenty-three when he was cast as high school teenager Steve Harrington.(79) In the original treatment for Stranger Things (or Montauk as it would have been at the time), Dr Brenner was dressed more casually. Matthew Modine decided to make Brenner more regimented and aloof. The sort of man who would wear the same suit and tie each day so that he didn't have to waste any time choosing clothes.(80) The cast in season three were allowed to do some shopping in the mall when production ended. Sadie Sink missed out though because she left her bag of free goodies in her trailer. Millie Bobby Brown had better luck and filled up a bag from the Gap store.(81) Epsom salt (in huge quantities) was used to float Millie Bobby Brown in the season one sequence where they create a sensory deprivation water chamber in the school.(82) The Duffers didn't have a name for Dr Owens at first so in the early Stranger Things 2 script drafts they called him Dr Paul Reiser in tribute to Carter Burke (who was obviously played by Reiser) from James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens. Carter Burke was the company man who is initially ambiguous in that we don't know if he'll be good or bad. With this in mind, it's probably no surprise that the Duffers decided to simply cast Paul Reiser as their new Carter Burke inspired character.(83) Robin sliding down the middle of the mall escalator in season three is a homage to Scott Reiniger doing the same thing in George A Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead.(84) Stephen King, such an important influence on the Duffers, has praised Stranger Things and said he is a big fan.(85) Sesame Street did a Stranger Things parody in 2017.(86) It took Mark Steger over thirty minutes to climb into the Demogorgon suit.(87) Matthew Modine said he took inspiration from Cary Grant in North By Northwest when he had to choose a suit for Dr Brenner to wear.(88) Stilts and puppeteers were deployed to make the arms and legs of the Demogorgon creature appear freakishly long in season one.(89) Dustin is a fan of Three Musketeers candy (a chocolate covered candy bar with a fluffy nougat filling). The Three Musketeers chocolate bar was introduced back in 1932 as the third candy created by the Mars Company.(90) David Harbour said he was both surprised and thrilled to get the part of Jim Hopper. He thought Netflix would insist on a bigger name to play Hopper and somehow veto his casting.(91) There is a poster for Jim Henson's 1982 film The Dark Crystal on Mike Wheeler's wall in season one.(92) The Duffers decided to cast David Harbour as Hopper after watching him in a television series titled Manhattan. Manhattan was a drama about the creation of the atomic bomb.(93) The television set in the Wheeler home in season one that Mike proudly displays to Eleven is a 22-inch Mitsubishi.(94) When the show became a huge phenomenon (and in rapid fashion too), Winona Ryder expressed some trepidation about the overnight fame Stranger things had bestowed on the very young cast members. "I’m grateful that I got to start at the time I did. As much as I love it, I don’t know if I would even have become an actor [if I was starting out now]. I wouldn’t know how to [handle it]. I do worry about the massive exposure at that age."(95) Joe Keery was told that the character of Steve Harrington would be the school swimming ace in the show and so underwent intensive swimming training. In the end though this was all dropped and Steve is not depicted as the swimming ace in season one of Stranger Things.(96) David Harbour said he binged the first season of Stranger Things when it became available on Netflix. "I couldn’t stop watching... I knew what was coming, but I will say I got lost in it to the point where — and this is sad and pathetic — I was on my couch in the East Village watching the scene where I’m saving Will and I’m crying on my couch. I forgot completely that it was me, that I was involved in the show."(97) There are some clowns over the baby bed Terry Ives keeps for Eleven in season one. This seems to be another reference to Stephen King's IT.(98) Millie Bobby Brown, who is English, wasn't au fait with Eggo waffles and neither were her family. "Eggos are an American thing," said Millie, "and my British family is like - We don't know what that is!"(99) There is a mistake in season one that will only be noticed by those with good eyesight. Hanz Holzer’s book Great American Ghost Stories appears in a scene but this book was only published several years later in 1990.(100) The Upside Down was known as the Nether in the scripts for season one.(101) After the success of the first season, the Duffers and some of the cast were invited to the White House. It transpired that President Obama was a Stranger Things fan.(102) The electronic movie scores of John Carpenter in the seventies and eighties are often cited as a huge influence on the music in Stranger Things. One person who would beg to differ is Carpenter himself. "I saw a preview of Stranger Things — I haven’t watched it," said John Carpenter. "It didn’t sound anything like me. And I’m not sure which ones people are talking about. As far as I can see, nobody scores movies like I do. They just don’t. They don’t even try to do it the way I do it, which is fine. If you point out something to me, I’ll take a listen to it."(103) Wanna Fight from the Only God Forgives soundtrack by Cliff Martinez is patently the biggest influence on the Stranger Things title theme.(104) The Wheeler family seem quite fond of tater tots. Tater tots are grated potatoes formed into small cylinders and deep-fried, often served as a side dish. The name "tater tot" is a registered trademark of the American frozen food company Ore-Ida.(105) Stranger Things producer and director Shawn Levy said it was exceptionally difficult to obtain permission to use the Michael Jackson song Thriller in the trailer for Stranger Things 2. "Getting Thriller for the season-two trailer took months," said Levy. "We tried fifty other songs. Literally, I’d wake up at 4 a.m. thinking, “It’s a good trailer, but it’s not going to make people lose their minds.” So without telling the brothers, I went back into it with the lawyers for Michael Jackson’s estate, which was complicated by factors I won’t go into right now. Suffice it to say, it was a big group of people that had to come to a yes."(106) The Upside Down was not supposed to feature much in the original plans for Stranger Things. It was supposed to be a place that was largely unseen and would have to be imagined by the audience. A place of Lovecraft inspired horror that would be too terrifying to endure or show. By the time that Stranger Things went before the cameras, the Duffers changed their mind and decided that the Nether (as it was) would be shown onscreen several times.(107) The Duffers said that many of the executives who rejected Stranger Things suggested the show would work better if they got rid of the children and made it all about Jim Hopper. These executives were obviously completely wrong as it was the children that made season one so special.(108) Billy Hargrove has a Camaro. This is the car the baddie Buddy Repperton drives in Christine (a Stephen King book made into a film by John Carpenter).(109) Most of the dust particles and spores in the Upside Down are conveyed by computer special effects.(110) Millie Bobby Brown's hair obviously grew considerably after season one was produced and so for the scene in the second episode of Stranger Things 2 where there is a flashback that takes place right after Eleven has confronted the Demogorgon in the first season finale, CGI had to be used to give the impression that Eleven still had her famous buzzcut.(111) The looming spider-like Shadow Monster in Stranger Things 2 was based on natural phenomena in nature. "We knew from the Duffers that it would be humongous, like fifty stories tall," said special effects producer Christina Graff. "Since we had all these electrical disturbances last year in season one, where the Christmas lights were blinking or any sort of electrical light is blinking, we knew there were going to be storms in season two. The Shadow Monster is somehow connected to all of that energy, and then we determined it’s gonna be like cloud-like or storm-like. We had conversations also with the production designer, Chris Trujillo, and we searched for a lot of references to storms and clouds and things like tornadoes."(112) Designing the Demogorgon for season one was a long process. There were test models of the creature that took over a month to construct.(113) In Dungeons & Dragons terms, Mike is the Paladin, Dustin the Bard, Will the stealthy Rogue, Lucas the Ranger, and Eleven the Magician.(114) Stranger Things might take place in Indiana but the show is produced in Atlanta, Georgia.(115) The Duffers and Shawn Levy had to ask permission from Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman (Aykroyd and Reitman held the rights to Ghostbusters) to put the boys in Ghostbusters costumes for Stranger Things 2 . Aykroyd was a fan of Stranger Things so this didn't turn out to be a problem.(116) Joyce driving Will to the lab for a medical check in Stranger Things 2 is shown overhead as a homage to Jack Nicholson driving his family to the hotel in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.(117) In the first episode of season two, MADMAX, Mike is sorting out some of his old toys to give away and becomes reflective when he picks up a dinosaur toy. This is because that was the first toy he showed Eleven when she lived in his basement in season one.(118) Charlie Heaton and Natalia Dyer became a real couple after playing Jonathan and Nancy in Stranger Things.(119) Noah Schnapp was the last of the boys to be cast in Stranger Things. Noah was at summer camp when the Duffers telephoned him to say he had the part of Will Byers.(120) Over 300 girls auditioned for the part of Eleven before Millie Bobby Brown was cast.(121) Although it is sometimes suggested that the first season of Stranger Things operated on a modest budget this is not really true. At $6 million an episode, the first season cost around $50 million. While this is modest compared to big Hollywood movie blockbusters, $6 million an episode is fairly high end for a TV show - especially a brand new one with no track record to speak of.(122) Mind Flayers are called illithids in Dungeons & Dragons. They have psychic abilities and seek to dominate all dimensions.(123) At the conclusion of shooting on season one, Millie Bobby Brown took home some props as mementoes. The props she chose were a print of Eleven's 011 tattoo and some of the fake blood used to depict Eleven's nosebleeds.(124) When they first conceived Montauk (eventually to become Stranger Things), the Duffers toyed with the idea of the show taking place in a winter landscape of heavy snow.(125) The children in Stranger Things keep in touch through TRC-214 Radio Shack walkie-talkies. These are from the 1984 Radio Shack catalogue (a mild anachronism) and somewhat high end for kids to own (these walkie-talkies were more commonly used by employees on large construction sites) but they serve their function in Stranger Things by allowing the children to communicate and simultaneously add another retro eighties veneer to the show.(126) Steve Harrington having to wear a humiliating costume in season three is a reference to Judge Reinhold's character having to do the same thing in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.(127) A special cloth grid was put in the Starcourt Mall set to block out daylight for certain scenes. This was so that scenes supposed to be set at night could be shot during the day without any sunshine infiltrating the mall.(128) Joyce Byers drives a Ford Pinto in season one. Joyce has a 1976 model. The family in the film version of Stephen King's Cujo have a Ford Pinto.(129) Netflix hired some of the voice actors who had dubbed Winona Ryder in movies to voice Joyce Byers in foreign language versions of Stranger Things.(130) Priah Ferguson as Erica Sinclair has a sizeable 110 ten more lines in season three than she did in season two.(131) Steve Harrington has a BMW 733i in season one.(132) The shooting location for police station in Hawkins is 48 Pray Street, Douglasville, Georgia.(133) In season two there is a scene where Jonathan and Nancy have breakfast at Murray Bauman's house and they all seem amused when Murray drops some scrambled egg. This moment was not scripted but something that just happened. They left it in because it was funny.(134) In the finale of season three, Suzie has Dustin's cap from the first two seasons in her bedroom.(135) In a twist of fate, around the time he was cast in Stranger Things, Finn Wolfhard also won a part in a forthcoming film adaptation of Stephen King's IT - a story the Duffers had always wanted to turn into a film themselves.(136) During the auditions, Gaten Matarazzo and Noah Schnapp both initially read for the part of Mike Wheeler.(137) Dacre Montgomery said that Billy Hargrove was partly based on Kiefer Sutherland's character Ace in the 1986 film Stand By Me.(138) Noah Schnapp is one of the few cast members in Stranger Things who actually plays a character older than his real age.(139) To give Noah Schnapp as Will Byers a feverishly green tongue in Stranger Things 2 they actually used cake frosting.(140) Amy L Forsythe, who has worked on the makeup in Stranger Things, says that some rather ingenious solutions have been found to add a realistic layer of dirt and dust to characters who have endured the Upside Down. "We had a mud that we really liked, kind of like clays and that kind of stuff, but it didn’t quite have the texture that I wanted, and I wanted more textural layers to it. So, we were playing in the trailer, and we have an espresso machine in the trailer, so I took our concoction and I threw in the espresso grounds, and it was perfect."(141) Kali is the name of a Hindu goddess. Kali is the chief of the Mahavidyas, a group of ten Tantric goddesses who each form a different aspect of the mother goddess Parvati.(142) Season one costume designer Kimberly Adams said that social class was a salient factor in choosing the clothes specific characters would wear. "Will is the youngest in the family. His mom doesn't have a lot of money. He would have had hand-me-downs. I really tried to get, same with his brother as well, just that kind of that odd, ill-fitting, not trendy-of-the-time kind of fit. Different than somebody like Mike, whose family was upper-middle class and conservative. He would have had newer things for the school year."(143) Barbara Holland's first name is sometimes alleged to be a tribute to the heroine of the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.(144) In season three, Eleven has a photo by her bed of Mike in his Ghostbusters uniform.(145) Season two costume designer Kim Wilcox said they deliberately made Will's Ghostbusters costume more homemade and droopy than the other boys. "We thought about whose costume would be more 'together' and whose would be less, and whose mom maybe made it from scratch and whose mom didn't."(146) To win the part of Maxine Mayfield, Sadie Sink had five call backs and an audition (in which she was required to perform two scenes) all in the space of two weeks.(147) The casting department on Stranger Things looked at nearly a thousand boys when they were casting the roles of Dustin, Mike, Lucas, and Will for season one.(148) The Duffers said they took an instant liking to Finn Wolfhard because Finn was an eighties movie buff.(149) The Duffer Brothers used to be writers on the M. Night Shyamalan television show Wayward Pines.(150) Shannon Purser had no previous professional acting experience when she was cast as Barb Holland in Stranger Things.(151) In the Palace Arcade you can see a game called Quest for the Space Knife. This game is fictious and based on the fact that one of the production crew had a music band called Space Knife.(152) You can pick up some music from the John Hughes film Pretty in Pink playing during the funeral scene of Will Byers in season one.(153) The Byers' family dog Chester did not return in season two. David Harbour said the dog was a nightmare in season one because it never did what it was told on the set. The Duffers obviously decided life would be somewhat easier without a disobedient dog on the set.(154) Caleb McLaughlin only auditioned for the part of Lucas at the last minute because a slew of rejections in other auditions had left him deflated.(155) It is often reported that Millie Bobby Brown's father was reduced to tears when she had her long hair cut to play Eleven. Millie said this story is slightly muddled up. It was her mother who got tearful - not her father.(156) David Harbour said that a surprising amount of thought went into the design of Hopper's hat. "Orlando Palacios at Worth & Worth designed that hat for me. He actually made a hat for me for the Black Mass premiere in Toronto. I fell in love with him and his shop, so much that I went back to him when we were developing the character of Hopper, and on paper, there was no hat for Hopper. So I told the Duffers that I wanted an iconic hat, like the pork pie in The French Connection, or Indy’s fedora. I went to Orlando and said, “hey, this guy was born in 43, he’s 40 years old in 1983, let’s talk about a hat for him. Maybe he went to Vietnam, or maybe his dad was in World War II.”. And Orlando says, “great, maybe it’s his dad’s hat. There’s a hat called the open road that Eisenhower used to wear.. So we developed this open road hat that was great, and we had three of them made for the character. Orlando is an extraordinary artist, and he’s really detail-oriented, so if you look carefully at the hat, you’ll see the remnants of a band, which is an invisible band – that’s created when things are faded when the Sun hits them. So we decided that at one point it was his father’s hat, and then the band fell off, but Hopper still wears it. That was really important to me, and I felt like it was something I could mess around with, and it felt like an old glove. But it also felt like something he could hide behind. In many ways, Hopper likes to hide and he doesn’t want people to see the pain that he experiences every day and doesn’t want people to see what he’s feeling. So he has this big wide brim, a 3 inch rim that he can pull down and hide behind."(157) When the children heave the radio tower aloft in the first episode of season three, the shot is based on the iconic World War 2 image of American soldiers hoisting the flag atop Mount Suribachi at the Battle of Iwo Jima.(158) The real location for Hawkins Library in Stranger Things is Butts County Probate Court in Jackson, Georgia.(159) Linnea Berthelsen, who played Kali, said she wasn't too bothered by the poor critical reception The Lost Sister seemed to endure. "I haven’t really paid much attention to it, it’s not my storyline and I didn’t write it, and I didn’t direct it. I just admire the Duffers for taking big risks this season and I think it’s really brave and really great that they’re doing it."(160) Millie Bobby Brown calculated that she herself only consumed the equivalent of about two Egg waffles shooting season one. Her character Eleven was obviously depicted as eating way more than that.(161) Noah Schnapp did not enjoy Will Byers coughing up in the slug in the bathroom at the end of Stranger Things 2. "They made this weird mixture of, I think it was licorice and gummies and apple sauce. I actually thought it would taste good! So I took a big scoop on the first take, and I put it in the back of my mouth, and oh God, it was so disgusting. At the beginning of the scene, I'm supposed to pretend it's not in my mouth, and then I cough it up. But inside, I was already gagging."(162) Sadie Sink said she turned temporarily off her social media notifications when she was cast in Stranger Things 2. She found the prospect of overnight fame somewhat intimidating.(163) Just before Mike and Eleven kiss at the Snow Ball in Stranger Things 2 you can see Finn Wolfard whisper a warning to Millie Bobby Brown.(164) In the initial plan for the second season, Mike and Eleven were not going to see each other again until the finale.(165) Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine knew each other long before Stranger Things. They were both in the music video for the Roy Orbison song A Love So Beautiful.(166) Finn Wolfhard has a strong (and very deliberate you would imagine) resemblance in season one of Stranger Things to Henry Thomas in the 1984 kids spy film Cloak & Dagger. Mike Wheeler and Davey Osborne (the character played by Henry Thomas in Cloak & Dagger) have the same hairstyle, brandish a walkie-talkie, and wear similar clothes.(167) Because he was one of the stars of The Goonies (a 1985 family adventure film that is an obvious touchstone for Stranger Things), the Duffer Brothers were worried that casting Sean Astin in season two might be too obvious. "They actually hesitated to hire me because I was in The Goonies," said Astin, "because the critical thing is you’re not distracted."(168) When Joyce takes an axe to the wall in season one, this is a homage to Jack Nicholson in Kubrick's The Shining.(169) Kyle Lambert was hired to produce the posters for Stranger Things. His brief was to replicate hand painted film artwork found in vintage movie posters from the 1980s.(170) Although the first season of Stranger Things, like all modern television, was shot with digital cameras, film grain was scanned in to give the show a more vintage period look.(171) Jim Hopper is the name of the Green Beret that Arnold Schwarzenegger's commando unit is searching for in the 1987 film Predator.(172) Hawkins is the name of the character played by Shane Black in Predator. Given how much the Duffers love pop culture references this appears to be no idle coincidence.(173) After the Duffers ditched the idea of setting the show in Montauk, everywhere from Texas to the Pacific Northwest was considered as the new backdrop until they settled on Indiana.(174) The Hawkins Department of Energy building in Stranger Things is really the former Georgia Mental Health Institute (now Emory University Briarcliff Campus, Atlanta). This mental institution closed down years ago and the bleak and functional exterior of the building was perfect for the secret government lab in Stranger Things.(175) The former Georgia Mental Health Institute building had an elaborate underground tunnel that took you right inside the facility. When they asked about this, the production team were told that the tunnel had been dug so that new inmates to the institution could be taken in and out and never be seen by the public.(176) The interior scenes for the Hawkins Lab in Stranger Things were mostly filmed in a studio.(177) Season one costume designer Kimberly Adams said it was great fun choosing the clothes for Millie Bobby Brown to wear as Eleven. "I loved working with Millie Bobby Brown! Not your typical eleven year-old, an old soul! She brought so much to that character! I sketched out her looks to make sure we captured what the Duffers envisioned. The hospital gown had to be a clue where a piece of it is found later. Benny’s t-shirt he puts her in had to be specific. When she had to get clothes from Mike’s house, we tried her in his clothes and of course she was adorable! Millie brought so much emotion to the character with virtually no words, like a silent star!"(178) The quarry scenes in the first season were filmed at Bellwood Quarry, Atlanta.(179) The shooting location for the funeral of Will Byers in season one was Bethany Cemetery, Rivers Road, Fayetteville.(180) The design of the Upside Down was made easier by everyone involved in the production design and special effects having a similar concept of what it should look like. They all saw this as a place of vines and spores and a landscape that appeared ravaged by disease. They wanted the Upside Down to look wet and swampy and be a murky and misty place to explore.(181) The Duffers allowed Shawn Levy to direct the third and fourth episodes of season one to give themselves more time to refine the scripts for the episodes to come. This would become a tradition on any season of Stranger Things. The Duffers had originally planned to direct all eight episodes in season one but this would have a created an impossible workload for them and left no time to revise any scenes(182) The Duffer Brothers are fans of manga and Japanese anime. They have said that Elfen Lied and Akira were influences on Stranger Things.(183) Dustin's wears K-Swiss Heaven S sneakers in season one. Mike's sneakers are PUMAS while Lucas wears Saucony.(184) Eleven often wears Converse sneakers in Stranger Things. Millie Bobby Brown has appeared in commercials for this brand.(185) The scene in Stranger Things 2 where Steve and Nancy have dinner with Barb's parents and Steve refers to Kentucky Fried Chicken as KFC created some debate as Kentucky Fried Chicken had yet to rebrand themselves as KFC in 1984. It was not unheard of for people to use the term KFC in 1984 but very rare all the same.(186) Craig Henighan, a sound designer on Stranger Things, supplied the voice for Dustin's unusual (and dangerous) pet Dart.(187) There is toy mistake in season one when Eleven levitates Mike's Millennium Falcon model. The toy is plainly not period accurate to 1983 because it doesn't have the orange stickers on the back which represented the ship's engine blast.(188) The main child actors in season one were alleged to have earned $30,000 an episode. The success of the show meant they would get much more than this in future seasons.(189) Charlie Heaton had few screen credits before Stranger Things and was inexperienced but he impressed the casting director in an audition conducted through Skype in a London cafe.(190) When Eleven steals the Eggo waffles from the store in season one, there is a mistake because you can see some Trident gum as she leaves. This gum was not sold until 2001.(191) Georgia International Horse Park was used for some of woodland scenes in season one. This park hosted the equestrian competition in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.(192) East Point First Baptist Church at 2813 East Point St in East Point, Georgia was the shooting location for the hospital scene in the last episode of season one.(193) In their interviews for Stranger Things 2, the Duffers said that Millie Bobby Brown was always game to do multiple takes of a scene to make it absolutely perfect(194) During the funeral of Will Byers in season one, Dustin complains about the quality of the Nilla Wafers. Nilla is a brand name owned by Nabisco that is most closely associated with its line of vanilla-flavored, wafer-style cookies.(195) There is a food mistake in season one when Dustin has a 1999 Jack in the Box PEZ dispenser.(196) The home of Joyce Byers in Stranger Things is a real house in Georgia that the set department found on the edge of some woodland. The exteriors of this house were used while the interiors were shot on a soundstage in Atlanta.(197) The special effects team on season one said the most complex sequence to design and capture was the moment in the finale when Eleven battles the Demogorgon in the school classroom.(198) Millie Bobby Brown did a Skype audition for Stranger Things in London with an impeccable American accent (which she taught herself by watching the Disney channel).