Trivia / Jurassic Park

Works with their own Trivia pages:

Novels

• Jurassic Park
• The Lost World

Films:

• Jurassic Park
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park
• Jurassic Park III
• Jurassic World
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
• Jurassic World Dominion

Others:

• Jurassic Park: The Game
• Jurassic World Alive
• Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous

The Franchise in general:

• Ascended Fanon: There's a bit of history behind Rexy the T-rex's name. During film production, the handlers referred to the animatronics by the nickname Roberta, which was used in some circles to refer to the character herself. Later, when it became clear that the T. rex in Jurassic World was the same one in Jurassic Park, fans started using Rexy, based on a common misspelling of the nickname Rexie (used by Muldoon to occasionally refer to the adult rex). Rexy would become the most commonly used reference over the next few years, but was never included in the canon until the relatively obscure young adult novel The Evolution Of Claire came out. Here, it was the name used by the Jurassic World handlers for her. Since then, the name Rexy has shown up in multiple sources including ''Camp Cretaceous'' and Jurassic World Alive, with the fandom largely using it as her official name. That being said, she's never referred to by any name in the films.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Julianne Moore was considered for Ellie Satler. She would play Sarah Harding in The Lost World.
• Franchise Zombie: After the success of the first movie, Steven Spielberg became interested in making a sequel and wanted Michael Crichton to write a novel that could be used as its base. Crichton had never written a follow-up to any of his own novels before, but published The Lost World (1995) (the only sequel he ever wrote). He had to make some Retcons in order for the new book to fit in with on-screen continuity — most notably, bringing back Ian Malcolm, who died in the first book but survived in the movie. (As it turned out, he was prematurely declared dead and made a recovery.) Four more movies have since followed without any source material from the original author, aside from scenes from the books that had not yet been filmed.
• Money-Making Shot: The iconic Tyrannosaur escapes the fence and roars scene. And in a literal sense, the Gallimimus run, whose animatic convinced Spielberg that the computer-generated effects were good enough to replace any Stop Motion.
• Outlived Its Creator: Since the fourth movie, as Michael Crichton died in 2008. Richard Attenborough's death can count as well, as Jurassic World outlives John Hammond.
• The Red Stapler:
  • Responsible for amber's popularity in jewelry. Ironic, considering the book has one character express confusion over why Hammond is buying so much amber, since back then it had no cosmetic worth.
  • While the novel and film of Jurassic Park were part of a renewed surge of public interest in dinosaurs in the late 1980s and early 1990s (see The Land Before Time, for instance), the blockbuster success of the film once and for all cemented their pop culture image as intelligent and agile instead of dimwitted and slow. This reflected the Dinosaur Renaissance in paleontology which had started in the late 1960s, gained traction in the 1970s and inspired said surge by the 1980s. And the film also pretty much singlehandedly elevated Velociraptors to stock dinosaur status.
  • The film inspired a generation of kids to go into paleontology.
  • According to one article the Chilean sea bass, mentioned and shown exactly ONCE in the movie, was still nearly overfished into extinction based on the movie's popularity.
• Refitted for Sequel: Sort of. When they made video games based off the movies, and needed to stretch them out, they mined each film's respective book; the first SNES game is in many ways more based on the book than the film.
  • Then there's the fact that a couple of scenes from the second film (the vacationing family at the beginning and the T. rex sticking its tongue through the waterfall) were originally from the first book.
    • This is common throughout the film franchise, with unused concepts from both earlier drafts of the script and the original books going into each of the sequels: an early scene with the daughter of an American family on vacation being attacked by a compy in the first book is reworked as a the daughter of a British family on vacation being attacked by a whole BUNCH of compies; the Tyrannosaurus attacking Grant and the kids on a boat in the first book was reworked into the Spinosaurus attacking Grant and the Kirbys in Jurassic Park III; and a dropped concept of Pteranodons attacking a helicopter that was considered for the endings of both The Lost World and Jurassic Park III finally made it to film in Jurassic World, though near the end of the second act instead of the third.
    • In the first book, Lex and Timmy's parents are getting a divorce, and them going to Jurassic Park is meant to be a fun thing to keep them busy. This is used for Gray and Zach in Jurassic World.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Dodgson's original actor Cameron Thor was in prison for lewd conduct with a minor when Dominion was made, causing the character's return to be recast with Campbell Scott.
• Science Marches On: A lot of the incorrectness is due to this. It was what was believed to be true in 1990 (when the book came out) or 1993 (film), but so much has changed since then that the whole franchise has its own page.
• What Could Have Been: The whole franchise has a page.
• Word of God: Malcolm was supposed to be dead at the end of the first novel. Since he survived in the movie and became a popular character, Crichton decided to include him in the second novel. The Never Saw The Body aspect merely let him get away with it.

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