Trivia / The Fault in Our Stars

• Actor Allusion:
  • Posters for Nickelodeon are seen in the video game room; Nat Wolff had starred in The Naked Brothers Band, a Nickelodeon show. He's also singing lines from a song he and his brother Alex wrote during that scene.
  • Hazel is given a book to read called Counter Insurgence. Her actress Shailene Woodley was due to star in The Divergent Series: Insurgent right after this film.
• Baby Name Trend Starter: The book made "Hazel" jump to the top 100 baby names two years after its release, which was when the film adaptation came out.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Augustus never claims to feel kinship with Anne Frank because she died "of an illness" like his own. He and Hazel both clearly feel kinship with her because she died young, but the alleged murder-denying quote never occurs. That is a reworking of a much more contentious quote from an interview with John Green, who says that Anne Frank is "demystified" because she "just died of an illness" — an illness that she contracted in a concentration camp, mind you.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "Boom Clap" by Charli XCX. While the movie was hugely successful, the song would have a healthy life outside of it.
• Breakthrough Hit: John Green has had many popular books before this, but this was his first massive hit and the book that really brought him into the public eye. In 2014 alone, only the Divergent trilogy was able to rival it in sales. And considering that the film adaptations of both share the lead actors...
• California Doubling: Pittsburgh played Indianapolis in the movie due to Pennsylvania offering more generous film-production tax credits than Indiana.
• Casting Gag: Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort play a couple in this and siblings in Divergent. These two books/films also have a very large rivalry, alongside The Hunger Games.
• Completely Different Title:
  • The Norwegian title of the book is Fuck Fate. No, really.^note Hilarious in Hindsight, since Honest Trailers' take on the film gives the film the alternate title Cancer F*cking Sucks.
  • In Sweden the book is called Förr eller senare exploderar jag, meaning "Sooner or later, I'll explode".
  • In German it's called Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter, meaning "Destiny is a mean traitor".
  • In Japan, both the novel and the film is called "Kitto, Hoshi no Sei ja nai"- Translated as both "Surely, Don't Blame it to the Stars" or context-wise as "You Cannot Blame it to Fate, For Sure", due to the East Asian belief that the fate of a person is already predestinated and you cannot change it, in this case being the main character having cancer.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Shailene Woodley was 23 playing Hazel at 16.
  • Ansel Elgort was more borderline, being 20 and playing an 18-year-old (who is amusingly listed as 19 at one point by Isaac).
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Shailene Woodley had long blonde Rapunzel hair, which she cut short to play Hazel. This affected The Divergent Series: Insurgent, where Tris cuts her hair drastically shorter than she does in the book — as she didn't have time to grow it out again.
  • Lily Kenna, who played the young Hazel, had her hair shaved off on-screen.
• Enforced Method Acting: Nat Wolff wore blackout contacts to properly simulate being blind.
• Method Acting: Shailene Woodley learned how to shorten her breath to properly simulate how Hazel would speak in real life.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailer features an extra bit of Hazel and Gus's sex scene where Hazel giggles and says "We're a hot mess," and an alternate take of Hazel's "our little infinity" line.
• Referenced by...: The book's bold, distinctive cover design makes it easy to spot in TV shows and films. With that helping it along, the book's found a minor foothold in late-2010s screen vernacular as shorthand for when a sappy book is needed to hint at a character's tender side, or simply for them to cry at.
  • One of the earliest references was in a Season 2 episode of Orange Is the New Black, released the same year as the book's film adaptation. The moment in question shows a couple of characters bemoaning its depressing subject matter of kids with cancer, calling the author "a sick fuck". John Green acknowledged it on social media, and was overjoyed.
  • Another early reference — pre-movie, actually — comes from Final Fantasy XIV, which named one of its many Shout-Out achievements "The Stars in Our Faults".
  • The Season 6 episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic titled "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" references the book not only through the title, but also in its central theme of longing for something your body won't allow you to have.
  • The uncool Detective Hitchcock from Brooklyn Nine-Nine is revealed to be a fan of the book during Season 4.
  • In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scott is shown reading the book and blubbering at the ending while trying to pass the time under house arrest.
  • A not-book-cover-related example, the thumbnail of Schaffrillas Productions' video on Cars has the text "The Fault In Our Cars" on the front.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Lily Kenna as Hazel at 13.
• Shrug of God: John Green has had to do a lot of this to fans who want to know what happened to the characters before/after the contents of the book; this becomes somewhat humorous in light of the fact that there’s also a significant in-universe example where Hazel and Augustus ask Van Houten what happened to the characters of An Imperial Affliction and he tells them he doesn’t know.
• Sleeper Hit: The novel the film was adapted from belongs to the young adult genre, which at the time was associated with a multitude of flopped adaptations post-The Hunger Games. While this film was expected to follow suit, it ended up making just under $50 million in its opening weekend, making it #1 in North America, and going on to gross over $300 million. It's saying something when an action movie starring one of the most bankable actors of all time went up against it, lost, and ended up under-performing as a result.
• Star-Making Role: For Ansel Elgort. Divergent also got him attention, but this is the film that shot him into the stratosphere.
• Underage Casting: Lily Kenna was only 11 when she played Hazel's 13-year-old self.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original ending had Hazel and Van Houten try to find a way to honor Gus's death by dying themselves in a way that would accomplish something and was meaningful to his life. They plan to go out and kill a drug lord and die at the hands of his bodyguards, but apparently decide against the idea before the story's conclusion. One editor, upon reading this ending, remarked, "I can't tell if the last 40 pages are a joke." Then again, neither can John Green himself.
  • Originally, the story was going to be from Isaac's point of view.
  • The scenes in Amsterdam were intended to be shot on location. However, filmmakers were intimidated by the poor October weather - and also denied permission to film inside the Anne Frank House. As a result, a replica was built, and Pennsylvania doubled for Amsterdam.
  • Mae Whitman was John Green's preferred actress to play Hazel. Nonetheless, he was blown away by Shailene Woodley's audition and gave her the Approval of God.
  • A scene was filmed featuring an argument between Gus and his mother right before the trip to Amsterdam, that also features in the book. It would have acted as Foreshadowing that Gus's cancer has come back.
• Write Who You Know: Hazel is based on a girl named Esther Grace Earl whom John Green met at a Harry Potter convention when he noticed her carrying an oxygen tank. He came to like her through various vlogs she put online, and they exchanged emails (much like Hazel and Gus do with Peter) and remained good friends until her death in 2010. While Esther inspired Green in creating Hazel and finishing the novel, he publicly stated that Hazel's story was not meant to be conflated with Esther's, and the novel was not meant to be a biography of Esther.

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