All Knowledge

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Harvey Dent Nearly Went to Someone Else

Aaron Eckhart wasn't a lock for Harvey Dent - Liev Schreiber, Josh Lucas and Ryan Phillippe had all shown interest, and Mark Ruffalo actually auditioned for the part. Nolan ended up going with Eckhart after being impressed by his performance in Thank You for Smoking.

That Accent Was Never in the Script

Steven Grant's wobbly British accent wasn't written into the scripts at all — head writer Jeremy Slater says the original difference between Steven and Marc was purely down to attitude, until Oscar Isaac pitched giving Steven a distinct voice himself.

Made in South Korea, Written in Burbank

The show was written and produced out of Nickelodeon's studio in Burbank, but almost all the actual animation was outsourced to South Korean studios JM Animation, DR Movie, and MOI Animation, which is fairly standard for American TV animation but not something most viewers ever think about.

Mark Ruffalo Played Both Banner and the Hulk

Thanks to how far motion capture had come by 2012, Ruffalo wasn't just voicing the Hulk in cutaways, he actually performed the majority of Hulk's physical movement himself in a mocap suit. It's the first time in a live action film that both sides of Banner were played by the same actor, and you can genuinely see Ruffalo's mannerisms in the big guy if you look closely.

Born Out of The O.C.'s Success

Creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage had just wrapped up their run on The O.C. and wanted to bring what they'd learned to a New York setting. That itch to do something bigger and glossier in Manhattan is basically where Gossip Girl was born.

Dry Docks Was Originally a Cut Singleplayer Level

The multiplayer map Dry Docks actually started life as a rough blockmesh layout designer Junki Saita was testing out for a singleplayer level. When that level idea got dropped, the layout was too good to waste, so it got reworked into a competitive multiplayer map instead.

A Betrayal Scene That Got Cut From the Story

Lead writer Joseph Staten had some far darker ideas for Halo 2's narrative than what made it to the final cut. One dropped scene reportedly had Miranda Keyes strapping a bomb to Master Chief's back and throwing him into a pit, a moment of betrayal that never made it past the drawing board once the deadline crunch really hit.

You Can Actually Play Marco Polo

Run past a rooftop pool during one of the city chapters and jump in, and Drake will actually start playing a round of Marco Polo, a playful little callback to the explorer's role in the first game. Naughty Dog liked the joke enough to bring it back years later in Uncharted 4.

Cosmetic Coins Hidden in Plain Sight

Scattered around the Tower and other social spaces are small, non-interactive coins visually identical to the collectible Destiny Coin. They can be spotted tucked into bushes, tree branches, and rafters, but can never actually be picked up.

A Kid Once Used WoW to Survive a Real Moose Attack

Back in 2010, a twelve-year-old Norwegian boy named Hans Jørgen Olsen ran into an angry moose while out walking with his sister. He taunted the moose to pull its attention away from her, then feigned death once it turned on him, both straight out of his hunter playbook in WoW, and it actually worked; the moose lost interest and wandered off.