Trivia / Pacific Rim

• Approval of God: During the Pacific Rim panel at Wonder Con, Guillermo del Toro gave a Shout-Out to this fan-created sweded trailer.
• Box Office Bomb: It did not do well domestically, taking in $101 million on a $190 million budget, with every sign of this trope happening. However, the overseas market unexpectedly pulled in $309 million, with a huge $111 million return from China coming as a complete surprise. Including marketing and the less profitable ratios for overseas releases, though, means it still didn't become profitable in theaters. This did not stop the sequel from getting the green light.
• California Doubling: The entire film was shot in Toronto, Ontario, with the exception of the Jaeger factory, which was shot in Germany.
• Channel Hop: For the sequel, in terms of its distributor. Due to Legendary Pictures' contract with Warner Bros. having expired in 2014, and the former having signed a 5-year deal with Universal starting in 2014, it will now be distributed in the US by Universal. However, despite Legendary and WB's deal ending, the latter will still distribute the film overseas.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Latin America: Pacific Titans
  • Canada: Pacific Shores
  • Estonia: The Pacific Fight
  • Brazil, Greece and Hungary: The Ring of Fire (which is an alternate name for the Rim regarding volcanic activity)
  • Portugal: Pacific Battle
  • Turkey: Pacific War
  • Uzbekistan: The Horrors of the Pacific
  • Vietnam: Super War
• Creator's Favorite: Travis Beacham claims his favorite characters are Mako Mori and Caitlin Lightcap.
• Darkhorse Casting: Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, and Idris Elba are pushed into the top billing as the protagonists. Elba is already famous, thanks to his role as the titular character in Luther and Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while Kikuchi is only known for her Oscar-nominated role in Babel. Unless one watches Sons of Anarchy, mainstream audiences don't know who Charlie Hunnam is. Asides from Elba, Ron Perlman is also another recognizable name.
• Dawson Casting:
  • If you do the math, Mako, Raleigh, and Chuck are all quite a bit younger than their actors.
  • Inverted with young Mako, who was played by a then-seven-year-old actress despite being thirteen during Onibaba's attack on Tokyo, according to the official timeline.
• Deleted Scene: A couple of scenes were deleted from the film, now available for viewing on DVD and Blu-Ray special features.
  • Newt's introduction was originally longer, with him and Raleigh antagonizing one another.
  • Another cut scene focuses on Chuck and his father Herc after the fight between Chuck and Raleigh. Herc chastises Chuck for his behavior, only for Chuck to retaliate by claiming that Herc was a bad or at least often absent father and saying that they wouldn't have anything to do with each other at all if it weren't for their drift compatibility. Without this scene, Stacker's line about Chuck having "daddy issues" becomes more random and ultimately makes Chuck a less sympathetic character than he could have been.
• Development Gag: "Tales From Year Zero" is full of references to earlier versions of the script before Guillermo del Toro became involved with the project; for example, the comic's main character Naomi Sokolov was the film's deuteragonist, traveling the world to find out the reasons behind the Kaiju, and the simulated death of Yancy Becket by Kaiju tongue was how he actually died.
• Executive Meddling: Arguably a positive example. To hear Tomokazu Sugita tell it, he originally dubbed the "Elbow Rocket" scene as it was written, and then a Warner exec told him "Since it's a robot movie, why not just yell 'Rocket Punch'?"
• Fake Nationality:
  • The Russian pilots, Aleksis and Sasha Kaidanovsky of the Russian Jaeger, Cherno Alpha, are played by the very Canadian Robert Maillet and Heather Doersken.
  • The Australian father-son duo of Herc Hansen and Chuck Hansen are played by Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky, who are an American and a Brit respectively.
  • The German scientists Newton Geiszler and Herman Gottlieb — Charlie Day is American and Burn Gorman is British (but was born in the US).
  • Clifton Collins, an American actor of Mexican and German descent, plays the Chinese-Filipino-Peruvian Tendo Choi.
  • The Wei Tang triplets are played by the Vietnamese/Chinese-Canadian Luu triplets.
  • The British Charlie Hunnam as the American Raleigh Becket.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Czech Republic: Pacific Rim: Attack on Earth
• Half-Remembered Homage: Guillermo del Toro noted in an interview with Ain't It Cool News that, while preparing for the film, he made a point of not rewatching the kaiju and giant robot films that influenced him, and he told his design team to likewise abstain. Del Toro wanted his pastiche to have subconscious homages to the movies he loved, rather than deliberate copying from them.
• Inspiration for the Work: While walking on the beach near Santa Monica Pier, Travis Beacham imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. "They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things." He later conceived the idea that each robot had two pilots, asking "what happens when one of those people dies?"
• In Memoriam: The film itself is dedicated to Ray Harryhausen and Ishir⁠ō Honda, both of whom are renowned for their work on giant monster movies.
• Line to God: Travis Beacham has a tumblr and answers questions, posts comments about the canon, and various other things relating to the film.
• Looping Lines: In some regions, Mako's Japanese lines during the Hong Kong battle were dubbed over in English with Rinko Kikuchi using very different intonations.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Charlie Day as the brilliant (albeit excitable) scientist Newton Geizler.
  • Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau, a Large Ham with a very bizarre fashion sense.
• Referenced by...: Monster Eye is a kaiju-themed video game released a year after this film, with it's final boss, a giant lizard monster, looking like the monsters from this film. Right up to being covered in spikes and bleeding blue-green blood.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Charlie Hunnam and Diego Klattenhoff look remarkably alike as brothers Raleigh and Yancy Beckett, to the point where it can be difficult to tell them apart.
• Shoot the Money: They built a fully functional Jaeger cockpit, mounted on hydraulics that would allow it to rotate, drop, and tilt to mimic the exterior behavior of the titanic mechs as they moved according to the actors' motions inside. Naturally this set was redressed into all four of the Jaeger cockpit interiors we see, with frequent shots of the actors performing an action before cutting to the CG robots mimicking it.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Idris Elba has said he takes roles in films like this because his daughter is a big fan of those types of movies.
• Underage Casting: Max Martini is only fourteen years older than Rob Kazinksy, who plays his son.
• Viral Marketing: A viral site titled Pan Pacific Defense Corps was set up showing map covering blueprints of Jaegers from around the world and a video showing a kaiju attack. A later update allows you to sign up as a member and take a quiz for your role in the PPDC.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tom Cruise was considered for the part that eventually went to Idris Elba.
  • Writer Travis Beacham came up with the idea that Rinko Kikuchi's character Mako Mori was going to speak entirely in Japanese for the first half of the movie and her partner Raleigh wouldn't understand her. Then when they finally got their connection calibrated in the Jaeger he would hear her in English. Despite him seeing it as a good idea, he realized it would have been a chore to have the two leads speaking in different languages for the first half of the movie. This subplot was instead used in the comic Tales from the Drift, where it was the backstory for Tacit Ronin's copilots.
  • The aliens were originally written as full-out Abusive Precursors. They created our universe to escape the entropic death of their own.
  • One of the earlier outlines had less diversity, with the Russian, Chinese and Australians swapped out for more Japanese pilots and the Shatterdome being in Japan. Also, Knifehead's death was going to be more akin to Shinji blacking out and Eva 01 going berserk.
  • Crimson Typhoon was originally going to have four arms and be piloted by quadruplets, but it was already hard enough to find the Chinese triplets who were cast in the role, so Typhoon's arms were reduced to three. In another draft, they were all female.
  • Cherno Alpha was originally supposed to be a Mark-4 Jaeger before it was changed to be a Mark-1. It is labeled as a Mark-4 in the artbook and a few lines in the movie allude to this.
  • In the original draft of the film's script, Tacit Ronin is the only named active Jaeger in service alongside Gipsy Danger. Its pilots, Duc Jessop and Kaori Koyamada, developed a connection with Raleigh and Mako, going from uncertainty to camaraderie. It also had a laser capable of cleaving even a Category 5 Kaiju in half, and faced three of them in the original finale.
  • The Matador Fury was cut from the film due to time concerns.
  • Less important in the scheme of things but Raiju's inner head was more snake-like and he gave a bit more trouble in the novelization. Concept art of this longer and less horse shaped head is at the PR wiki.
  • Striker Eureka was originally intended to be the "Hero Jaeger" of the film. However, Del Toro thought that its design was "too cold" and "arrogant". As a result, Striker was passed over in favor of Gypsy Danger.
  • A bunch of impressive concept arts from the designer's portfolio, during the film's conception stage. From a Striker Eureka with blades for arms, Coyote Tango with a Power Fist, Jaeger pilot suits reminiscent of the armor from Halo, and a scrapped Korean Jaeger looking like an Evangelion Captain Ersatz.
• Word of Gay: Charlie Day has repeatedly said in interviews for Pacific Rim: Uprising that he plays Newt as being in love with Hermann, and implies that Newt's feelings existed in the first film as well.
  • Uprising director agreed, and had plans for a kiss between Newt and Hermann in the final movie.
• Word of God: Travis Beacham's Tumblr is a handy source on the film's universe, as he often answers fan questions.

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