Trivia / All the Bright Places

• Ability over Appearance: The author had envisioned Nicholas Hoult as Finch. Needless to say, Justice Smith captures Finch's Stepford Smiler vulnerability and loving charisma perfectly.
• Approval of God: Jennifer Niven was ecstatic that Elle Fanning played Violet - as she had actually written the character with her in mind when she started the book.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Elle Fanning and Felix Mallard were twenty playing Violet and Roamer.
  • Justice Smith was twenty-two as Finch.
  • Virginia Gardner and Lamar Johnson were twenty-three as Amanda and Charlie.
• Dear Negative Reader: Jennifer Niven had some choice words for Moral Guardians who complained that Finch's parents were too unrealistically negligent or that the subject matter was too dark for teens.
  There have been some adults who have taken issue with my book because they believe Finch’s parents are unrealistic in their negligence, but unfortunately these kinds of parents exist. There are also adults who don’t think authors should write about depression, mental illness, and suicide. They say, “Let teens learn about it when they’re older, but not now.” I understand this comes out of a desire to protect their kids, but that kind of attitude is dangerous. It isolates the teen they’re trying to shield."
• Defictionalization: After the book was published, Jennifer Niven created a real-life equivalent of Violet's web magazine Germ.
• Enforced Method Acting: Finch appears to panic when he realises he's scared Violet in the Blue Hole. This is because Justice Smith's shots were done last as the sun was going down, meaning the water was much colder.
• Fake American: Lamar Johnson (Canadian) as Charlie and Felix Mallard (Australian) as Roamer.
• Playing Against Type: It's certainly surprising to see Luke Wilson as the caring father in a Teen Drama.
• Self-Adaptation: Jennifer Niven also wrote the screenplay for the film.
• Tuckerization:
  • Possibly. Finch could have been named after Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird - as that is one of Jennifer Niven's favorite books (she jokes that she may have been "subconsciously influenced").
  • Violet's last name Markey came from an actress Enid Markey - who played Jane in the first Tarzan film in 1918.
• What Could Have Been: In an early draft of the book, Finch's first name was 'Teddy'.
• Write What You Know: Finch was inspired by a boy Jennifer Niven once fell in love with who suffered from bipolar disorder. While the character evolved into his own entity, his fate was the same as the real boy.
  "...it's the ending I lived with the real-life Finch. It was the story I knew."