Trivia / Unbreakable

• Completely Different Title: In Portugal and most Spanish-speaking countries, it has the somewhat adequate title "The Protected". In Brazil, however, it is "Closed Body" after an umbanda concept.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: M. Night Shyamalan always had Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in mind.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: M. Night Shyamalan named this as his favourite film of his own.
• Deleted Scene: Shyamalan included a number of deleted scenes on the dvd along with intimate commentary on what the scene was for and why it was ultimately taken out.
  • David has a Shower of Angst when he gets home from the hospital. It was felt to be too much too soon.
  • A scene with a priest after a memorial for the victims of the train crash, where David asks him some questions and the priest bitterly says that his nephew was on the train and he is dealing with his own crisis of faith. Taken out primarily for technical reasons, Shyamalan wasn't happy with the cinematography.
  • After the bench press session with his son, David goes to the weight room at the stadium while the team was unwinding after practice and loads up the barbell, finding himself able to press about 500 pounds. When he was done the entire team was watching him and stunned. Removed for being redundant with the earlier scene.
  • Another flashback scene with Elijah had him as a child being injured on a carnival ride. Due to the number of extras and being a period piece, it was actually one of the more expensive scenes to shoot. Removed for putting the main story on hold. However, the scene was later recycled in full for Glass.
  • A lunch date between Audrey and David was filmed, with Audrey inviting him by calling the house phone and playing it up as a first date. A friend of Audrey sees them and mistakes David for a lawyer Audrey was apparently talking about, ruining the mood. Removed for not fitting in the narrative in a natural way.
• Executive Meddling: The reason this movie was directed and billed as a psychological thriller rather than a superhero origin story as Shyamalan originally intended. Arguably, this resulted in a more interesting and unique film.
• Follow the Leader: The film came at a time just before the superhero boon, several months after X-Men but before Spider-Man kicked it into gear. With all the talk of superheroes and superpowers, this film ended up being a cornerstone of the concept of "real life superpowers" in various documentaries, including Stan Lee's Superhumans.
• Newbie Boom: It enjoyed a great surge of interest since 2017, thanks to the success of Split and the subsequent release of Glass.
• Playing Against Type: Samuel L. Jackson plays the near mirror-opposite of his previous roles: a weak, fragile, soft-spoken character. It's also fairly rare to see him play a villain as well.
• Underage Casting: Charlayne Woodard as Elijah Price's mother. Woodard is five years younger than Samuel L. Jackson. However, like many examples, this is because she's cast as child!Elijah's mother for which she is appropriately aged. When acting opposite of Jackson, she wears aging makeup.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Julianne Moore was originally cast as Audrey Dunn, but dropped out in order to star in Hannibal.
  • The Unbreakable Trilogy with parts two and three planned. Not being such a success, it remains a stand alone story. M. Night has said he is waiting for the right script and will ask Disney to make the sequel. Now with the release of Split, which is a Stealth Sequel to the film, it seems as if the trilogy will be completed, with the third film revolving around David Dunn tracking down Kevin Crumb/The Beast/The Horde. The trilogy was completed, 19 years after its start, with the release of Glass2019
  • Plot details and a villain from an abandoned sequel are intended to be used instead for the third installment of The Night Chronicles, following Devil and the planned sequel Reincarnate. With the release of Split and the fact the Devil sequels never came out, it's been speculated that the plot details and the villain was Kevin/The Horde.
  • After the release of Split, Shyamalan said that the idea of Kevin with a Split Personality creating a Superpowered Evil Side originated from the early drafts of Unbreakable, where his story would mirror that of David. But he could never make the character work within the confines of the movie and eventually dropped the character altogether, replacing him with the janitor in the orange jumpsuit for David to face against at the end of the film. Split reveals itself to be a Stealth Sequel to this movie, making it something of a Development Gag.

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