See here for trivia tropes related to the Peter Jackson films.
The Hobbit (book)
- Breakthrough Hit: The success of The Hobbit encouraged J. R. R. Tolkien to write a much larger novel about Middle-Earth, which turned out to be The Lord of the Rings.
- Recycled Script: In The History of the Hobbit it's pointed out that Thranduil the Elvenking and his hold in Mirkwood is closely derived from the original conception of Thingol of Doriath (Tinwelint of Aranor) — which also explains his distrust of dwarves. This isn't obvious to people who are only familiar with the published Silmarillion, because the final version made Thingol and Doriath much richer and less earthy and sylvan. However, Tolkien added a Discontinuity Nod to this when The Silmarillion does mention that Thranduil lived in Doriath in his youth and modelled his own kingdom in Mirkwood on it.
- Referenced by...: The source code for Perl 5, which does quote The Lord of the Rings many times, also quotes The Hobbit once, at the top of numeric.c
. - Science Imitates Art:
- Breviceps bagginsi, common name Bilbo's rain frog, was named such because its discoverer had fond memories of reading the novel to his children. Bilbo also lent his name to the asteroid 2991 Bilbo.
- Smaug is used as the name of a genus of spiny African lizards, which were named partly due to their resemblance to small armored dragons and partly because their range is centered around the Free State province of South Africa, which was Tolkien's birthplace. The dragon also lent his name to the Indian gecko Cnemaspis smaug.
- Beorn is a genus of Cretaceous tardigrades — water bears, in common terms — named after the man who can turn into a bear.
- What Could Have Been: See subpage.
- Written for My Kids:
- A curious case — while the popular myth is that he conceived of it as a bed-time story for his children using, as a broad framework, the sprawling Legendarium he had been creating for decades but never published, and then was encouraged to make it the first published work of Middle-Earth when they were delighted with it, it was later revealed that he'd always intended it as a "serious" work of fiction but told his peers it was originally for his children when they inquired about it so as to avoid their potential scorn (since in the 1930s, an interest in "fairy stories" was still seen as highly unbecoming of a gentleman of Tolkien's age and position). And yet this contained, as his own saying goes, a grain of truth — he did evidently use his children, his son Christopher in particular, as a sounding board for the chapters (and it was Christopher whose imagination was especially captivated by it all) in order to get a feel for what worked and what didn't, even though he hadn't written it "for" them.
- There's another episode that perhaps causes a little confusion about all this - when Tolkien finished the manuscript, he passed a few copies around to friends and favorite students. One of these traveled from one of his students to a friend of the student's, and eventually to the hands of Stanley Unwin, one of the heads of Allen & Unwin (Tolkien's first and greatest publisher). It was Unwin who then presented the book to his ten-year-old son Rayner to get an opinion of what a child thought of the book. After Rayner Unwin ended up loving it, Allen & Unwin's desire to publish The Hobbit was sealed, and the rest is history.
The Hobbit (animated)
- Colbert Bump: The film gained newfound interest in 2022 from Smiling Friends fans, due to Mip from the episode "The Enchanted Forest" being a direct homage to this film.
- Cut Song: Old Fat Spider, which in the book was sung by Bilbo to taunt the Mirkwood spiders, is on the soundtrack but not in the movie. There are also full versions of the second Misty Mountains Song and second In the Valley Ha Ha which only get one verse in the movie.
- Orphaned Reference: The first encounter with the Wood Elves is cut, which means the first actual reference to them is saying they had returned.
The Hobbit (live-action)
- Author's Saving Throw: The extended cuts of the films redeemed the trilogy in the eyes of many disappointed fans. Like with The Lord of the Rings, they include more scenes from the book (the Goblin Town song, the first proper meeting of Beorn) and explain certain things (the fate of Thrain which according to the second film's extended commentary was filmed when it was meant to be two movies and Kili's crush on Tauriel is foreshadowed in the extended cut for the first film). The third film's extended cut especially has received acclaim from both fans and critics for fixing a lot of problems for what was considered the weakest of the three movies, including the effects and giving the dwarves a chance to shine.
