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Spoilers (4)
New Line Cinema forced Alex Proyas to include the opening narration by Kiefer Sutherland, which Proyas objected to, saying it was unnecessary. The narration gives away several key plot twists and consequently many fans of the film prefer to watch it with the sound turned off during the narration until Sutherland looks at his pocket watch. Unsurprisingly, the director's cut omits this opening narration.
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There were many deliberate anachronisms to give the viewer a feeling of confusion of the time of the film.
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Has one of the shortest Average shot lengths (ASL) of any modern narrative production at 1.8 seconds. This means there is a cut almost every 2 seconds.
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An earlier draft of the script had Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) being skinned alive during the finale.
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Music inspector Bumstead is playing on his accordion in his very first scene in the movie is a Soviet WWII era song "Siniy Platochek" ("Blue scarf").
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The main character, John Murdoch, shares the name, and the quest, of a Scottish liberal in the 1870s and 1880s. The Scottish Murdoch led a major campaign for Scottish farmers to own their own land.
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The name of Kiefer Sutherland's character, Daniel Schreber, is the same as that of a man who wrote a book titled "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" during the heights of a period in which he was institutionalized for schizophrenia. The book has become a standard reading for many psychiatrists and psychologists, and many of the theories of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung were based on it (Freud never actually met Schreber, though). "Dark City" borrows heavily from the concept of "fleetingly-improvised men" which are found within Schreber's "Memoirs".
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Roger Ebert called this movie the Best Film of 1998. He recorded a special audio commentary track for the dvd release of the movie.
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Alex Proyas got the idea for the buildings changing and growing while the crew was moving pieces of the set around during filming of The Crow.
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Mr. Sleep is played by twins, a girl (Satya Gumbert) and her brother (Noah Gumbert). Both were fond of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and they (and the rest of the cast and crew) were frequently entertained by Richard O'Brien, who played Mr. Hand in this film and Riff Raff in "Rocky Horror", with recitations from that film.
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Despite the fact that this was filmed in Super 35, "Filmed in Panavision" is listed in the end credits.
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A number of pieces of the set, including those used for the rooftop chase, were sold to the production of The Matrix at the end of shooting.
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Spoilers
At the beginning of the film, there is a brief shot of the movie theatre which says "Now Showing, The Evil, Late Show Nightly" and to the right, "Coming Attractions, Book of Dreams" (a previous film by Alex Proyas). At the end of the movie the marquee still says Book of Dreams: 'Welcome to Crateland' is coming soon, even though the theater and marquee have changed.
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According to the list that Bumstead shows to Emma, the names of Murdoch's victims are Michelle Davies, Alison Montgomery, Samantha Richards, Kathleen O'Shea, Simone Shaunessy and Beth Mulligan.
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According to Director Alex Proyas commentary on the Director's Cut DVD, test screening audiences were "troubled" by the notion that the entire city wasn't sucked out into space once the Shell City Wall was breached. Thus, a last minute SFX addition of Bumstead and a Stranger drifting through a force field was created.
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This film deals with 'Last Thursdayism', a philosophy described in a satiric comment by 20th-century historian Bertrand Russell, referring to the "Omphalos" papers (1857) of Philip Gosse. Last Thursdayism says that the world (with us and our own basic memories included) could have been created recently, even last Thursday, but we cannot demonstrate such a thing because the world would have been created to look like an older world.
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