YMMV / 42

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• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Wendell Smith was a real person and not a character invented for the movie, despite looking, to modern eyes, to be someone who could never have existed in the days of Jim Crow.
• Anvilicious: The kid in the stands who starts learning racism from his father, only to see how wrong it is when Pee Wee puts his arm around Jackie. Yeah, we'd never get the message otherwise.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "They're just a bunch of crackpots still fighting the Civil War." Chadwick Boseman was later cast as Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with his debut in the film Captain America: Civil War.
    • Also, at one point the Phillies' Manager calls Jackie a monkey. One of T'Challa's biggest rivals for the throne of Wakanda styles himself after a gorilla.
  • This is not the last time that Boseman would portray a famous black historical figure in a biopic.
• Memetic Mutation: Pittsburgh!
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Yes, that's Agent LaSalle as Pee Wee Reese.
  • Also, while Jackie was his first Star-Making Role, Chadwick Boseman is better known nowadays for having played T'Challa.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • For all of the buildup to his hiring, Burt Shotton isn't given much to do.
  • Clyde, the man who first finds Jackie on Rickey's behalf, vanishes pretty early on in the film, when, like Harold, his feelings about watching Jackie throughout the season could have been explored.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, which was demolished in 1960, is digitally recreated inside and out, and it looks MAGNIFICENT. You'd never know that a baseball field in Chattanooga stood in for the real deal.
  • Ditto with the recreations of the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Crosley Field in Cincinnati, and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

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