Trivia

Director David Fincher shot over 1,500 reels of film, more than three times the usual amount for a 120 minute film.

Author Chuck Palahniuk has stated that he found the film to be an improvement on his novel.

During an exterior shoot in an urban residential area, a man in one of the apartments above the working film crew got so annoyed with the noise that he threw a 40 oz. beer bottle at them. The bottle hit director of photography Jeff Cronenweth, who, although he was cut open, was not seriously injured; the man was arrested shortly afterward.

During rehearsals, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton found out that they both hated the new Volkswagen Beetle with a passion, and for the scene where Tyler and The Narrator are hitting cars with baseball bats, Pitt and Norton insisted that one of the cars be a Beetle. As Norton explains on the DVD commentary, he hates the car because the Beetle was one of the primary symbols of 60s youth culture and freedom. However, the youth of the 60s had become the corporate bosses of the 90s, and had repackaged the symbol of their own youth, selling it to the youth of another generation as if it didn't mean anything. Both Norton and Pitt felt that this kind of corporate selling out was exactly what the film was railing against, hence the inclusion of the car; "It's a perfect example of the Baby Boomer generation marketing its youth culture to us. As if our happiness is going to come by buying the symbol of their youth movement, even with the little flower holder in the plastic molding. It's appalling to me. I hate it." However, Pitt is quoted on the DVD commentary as saying he has since had a change of heart about the new Beetle.

Three detectives in the film are named Detective Andrew, Detective Kevin, and Detective Walker. Andrew Kevin Walker was the writer of the David Fincher film Se7en (also starring Brad Pitt), and did some uncredited work on this movie's script.

While Edward Norton is trying to convince Helena Bonham Carter to leave the city by bus, the crew arranged cinema signs to make references to other films the cast had been in, although only one is visible during the actual scene. Seven Years in Tibet (starring Brad Pitt) is visible, although the sign letters actually say "Seven Year In Tibe" as if the theatre didn't have the required letters. Other marquees (in the far background, and not visible) reportedly said The People vs. Larry Flynt (starring Norton) and The Wings of the Dove (starring Carter).

The "filing cabinet" apartment block that the Narrator lives in is called "Pierson Towers", and the motto is "a place to be somebody" which is the city motto for Wilmington, Delaware (which is where the novel is set, and where the film was going to be set until the production ran into trouble with legal clearances).

Some of fake names used by the narrator in the self-help groups are taken from Planet of the Apes (Cornelius), as well as classic roles played by Robert De Niro (such as Rupert from The King of Comedy and Travis from Taxi Driver).

Much confusion exists amongst fans about the Narrator's name. Many believe it is Jack due to his use of the phrase "I am Jack's...", but others argue that he only uses the moniker Jack because that was the one he saw in "Annotated Reader". Interestingly, in the press packages released for the movie, which came in the form of an Ikea-esque catalog, the character is referred to as Jack, as he is on the back of the DVD, and in the booklet accompanying the DVD, where the Chapter list is referred to as "Jack's Chapters". Also, the original screenplay by Jim Uhls refers to him as Jack. On the other hand, in the closed captions for the film, he is referred to as Rupert. Edward Norton reveals that he refers to the character as Jack on the audio commentary on the DVD and Blu-ray.

The original "pillow talk"-scene had Marla saying "I want to have your abortion". When this was objected to by Fox 2000 Pictures President of Production Laura Ziskin, David Fincher said he would change it on the proviso that the new line couldn't be cut. Ziskin agreed and Fincher wrote the replacement line, "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school". When Ziskin saw the new line, she was even more outraged and asked for the original line to be put back, but, as per their deal, Fincher refused.

The 'soap slam on dish' shot used in the trailer took 41 takes to get right. After the 40th take, director David Fincher realized that the soap was sliding out of frame and so he settled for a fake soap prop.

Edward Norton lost 17-20 pounds for this role after having to beef up tremendously for his role as a Neo-Nazi skinhead in American History X. Norton achieved this form by running, taking vitamins and just ignoring the on-set catering.

David Fincher took 12 takes of the stuntman rolling down the stairs for the fight between The Narrator and Tyler at the end of the film. The take used in the movie is the very first one.

Author Chuck Palahniuk first came up with the idea for the novel after being beaten up on a camping trip when he complained to some nearby campers about the noise of their radio. When he returned to work, he was fascinated to find that nobody would mention or acknowledge his injuries, instead saying such commonplace things as "How was your weekend?" Palahniuk concluded that the reason people reacted this way was because if they asked him what had happened, a degree of personal interaction would be necessary, and his workmates simply didn't care enough to connect with him on a personal level. It was his fascination with this societal 'blocking' which became the foundation for the novel.

Edward Norton's apartment building, Pearson Towers, which he returns to at the beginning of the film to find his possessions strewn all over the sidewalk is actually Promenade Towers located at 123 South Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles. The apartment building's slogan in the movie is "A Place to be Somebody" while the actual apartment building's slogan is "A City in a City".

After the copyright warning, there is another warning on the DVD. This warning is from Tyler Durden, and is only there for a second. "If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this is useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned... Tyler"

When a Fight Club member sprays the priest with a hose, the camera briefly shakes. This happens because the cameraman couldn't keep himself from laughing.

When the Narrator is writing haiku poems at work and sending them to coworkers, the names on the email list include those of Production Assistants and other crew members.

Helena Bonham Carter wore platform shoes to help close up the disparity in height between her and Edward Norton and Brad Pitt.

To prepare for their roles, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt took basic lessons in boxing, taekwondo and grappling, and also studied hours of UFC programming. Additionally, they both took soapmaking classes from boutique company Auntie Godmother. Prior to principal photography, Pitt also visited a dentist to have his front tooth chipped.

Voted #4 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (November 2005).

Near the beginning of the film, a poster for the band 311 can be seen behind The Narrator's head, in the pawn shop scene with Marla.

The front of the product packaging for "Avery 8293 Matte White High-Visibility Labels for Inkjet Printers" shows a sample usage of the label on a shipping package. The address on this label is, "Tyler Durden 420 Paper St. Wilmington, DE"

The phrase, "You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world" is inspired by the book "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

According to author Chuck Palahniuk, much of the specific content of the novel (such as splicing single frames of pornography into family films, attending support groups for the terminally ill, erasing video tapes etc) came from stories told him by friends, and from things his friends actually did. Whilst writing the novel, Palahniuk also interviewed numerous young white males in white-collar jobs, discovering that "the longing for fathers was a theme I heard a lot about. The resentment of lifestyle standards imposed by advertising was another."

Author Chuck Palahniuk's novel was discovered by Fox 2000 Pictures executive, Raymond Bongiovanni who sent it to Laura Ziskin, President of Production at Fox 2000 Pictures. She felt it was a tremendous piece of literature, but not necessarily a great movie. The book was sent to a 20th Century Fox studio reader to evaluate its potential as a possible film, and the report sent back to Ziskin slammed the novel, saying it could never be made into a film, that it was "exceedingly disturbing", "volatile and dangerous", and would "make audiences squirm". Despite this however, Ziskin decided to go ahead with the project temporarily and began to look around for producers who might be willing to take it on. It was first offered to Lawrence Bender and Art Linson, but they turned it down (although Linson would ultimately return as producer). Next, it was offered to Joshua Donen and Ross Grayson Bell of Atman Entertainment. They both loved it and immediately agreed to produce it. Bell has since stated that the highly critical report from the studio reader was all he needed to make him want to work on the film, feeling every reason that the reader gave for why the film couldn't be made, was another reason to make it. Donen and Bell immediately organized a read-through of the book with some actors, who performed a roughly scripted version of the novel over the course of a six-hour session, and he sent recordings of the session to the still wavering Ziskin. As soon as Ziskin heard the recording, she agreed that a film adaptation could work, purchased the rights to the novel for $10,000, and green-lit the project.

Director David Fincher shot 38 takes of the scene between Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and The Narrator (Edward Norton) in Lou's Bar after The Narrator's apartment has blown up. Each take was filmed with two cameras, and for every individual take, Fincher would give the actors a rough idea of what to do, and they would improvise most of the dialogue. The scene as it exists in the finished film is made up of segments from numerous different takes and much of the dialogue, especially Tyler's dialogue, was completely ad-libbed on set.

Author Chuck Palahniuk told the producers from the very start that, although he fully supported the adaptation, he wasn't interested in writing the screenplay. Initially, producer Laura Ziskin considered hiring screenwriter Buck Henry to adapt the novel, due to the many thematic similarities between Fight Club and The Graduate (which had been adapted from the novel of the same name by Henry). However, Jim Uhls was ultimately chosen as the writer ahead of Henry. Cameron Crowe, Andrew Kevin Walker, director David Fincher and actors Brad Pitt and Edward Norton also did uncredited work on the screenplay.

The producers considered both Matt Damon and Sean Penn for the role of The Narrator, but director David Fincher wanted Edward Norton, having been impressed by Norton's performance in The People vs. Larry Flynt. At the same time, Norton had either been offered or was a final contender for three other major leading roles: in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Man on the Moon, and Runaway Jury (a project which ultimately fell apart). Norton eventually accepted the role in Fight Club. He and Jim Carrey did so well in auditions for the Andy Kaufman role in Man on the Moon that director Milos Forman told Universal he could not choose between them and the studio would have to make the final choice; they chose Carrey because he was a bigger box-office draw than Norton. Matt Damon took the lead role in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Runaway Jury was put on hold for years until being revived with John Cusack as the lead.

Prior to filming, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter considered visiting real support groups for the terminally ill, but they decided against it, as due to the satiric nature of the film, they didn't feel it was appropriate.

Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter spent three days recording orgasmic sounds for their unseen sex scenes.

When the projected $50 million budget escalated to $67 million shortly after shooting began, executive producer Arnon Milchan ordered director David Fincher to cut the budget by at least $5 million. Fincher refused, saying it would damage the integrity of the film, prompting Milchan to quit the movie. However, because Milchan's company, Regency Enterprises, was providing $25 million of the budget, without him, the project could not go ahead. 20th Century Fox studio head Bill Mechanic begged Milchan to return, and began to send him dailies so as to illustrate to him the merits of the film. After three weeks of seeing raw footage from the set, Milchan returned to the film, and approved the budget increase to $67 million, upping Regency Enterprises investment to $34 million.

The shot surveying Project Mayhem's destructive equipment lying in underground parking lots was a three-dimensional composition of over 100 photographs of Los Angeles and Century City by special effects photographer Michael Douglas Middleton.

During the shooting of the first group scene (where Thomas (David Andrews) talks about his wife getting pregnant with another man), an extra became so offended by the subject matter that he stormed off set, refusing to be paid.

Make up artist Rob Bottin had to build two different fat suits for Meat Loaf - one with nipples, one without - because the filmmakers weren't sure if 20th Century Fox would approve the suit with the prominent nipples.

The breath in the cave scene is recycled Leonardo DiCaprio breath from Titanic, which was composited into the shot.

According to Helena Bonham Carter, she based her performance of Marla Singer on Judy Garland in the later stages of her life. To help her get into the mindset, director David Fincher would often call her Judy on-set.

During the shooting of the night exteriors of Tyler's house in San Pedro, the helium balloon lights which were floated above the house by director of photography Jeff Cronenweth prompted a number of UFO sightings, resulting in the Lomita Sheriff's Department visiting the set to inquire what was going on.

The scene involving the destruction of the corporate artwork (where the huge ball crashes into the coffee shop) was the most troublesome scene to shoot in the whole film. Initially, director David Fincher had wanted to the scene to feature an entirely CG ball on live plates, but visual effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug convinced him to try shooting it as a live special effect instead. As such, special effects coordinator Cliff Wenger was placed in charge of the scene. Problems began to arise when Wenger discovered that the flooring at the location could only take 250 pounds per square foot. As such, a lightweight ball (100 pounds) had to be built to ensure no damage was caused. However, because the ball was so light, it didn't react the way a heavy ball would; for example, when the ball rolls down the steps, it bounced, when it rolled through the water it left no wake, and when it rolls through the pool, rather than sinking and rolling along the surface, it floated. As well as that, the ball couldn't gather enough speed. In the end, Wenger was reduced to having two special effects people running alongside, pulling the ball on wires and trying to hold it down so it didn't float on the surface of the water. There were also problems shooting the scene where the ball crashes through the front of the coffee shop. Wenger had only a 40 foot run up to the front of the shop, but because the ball was 8 feet high, and the ceiling of the area in which they were shooting was 10 feet, it meant the ramp could only rise 2 feet off the ground, leaving virtually no room for the ball to gather momentum prior to smashing into the glass. As such, when the ball would hit the café, it would smash the glass in the front of the shop and then just roll back out instead of crashing on into the counter. In the end, digital effects company Toybox was given the entire scene with orders to do a major cleanup on the live footage. For the rolling shots, they removed the bounces, added furniture which the ball violently knocks out of its way, added pavement cracks in the wake of the ball, added flickering lights, added additional splashes and a wake as the ball moves through the water, and added a digital camera shake. For the café shots, they completed the destruction of the counter, added flying glass and furniture, added flickering lights, and again, added digital vibration to the camera. In the end, although the majority of the actual scene is live photography, almost all of the minor effects in the shots are completely digital.

When the film stock was processed, several techniques were applied to alter the look of the footage and increase the 'grubbiness' of the image. Under the supervision of director David Fincher and director of photography Jeff Cronenweth, the contrast was stretched, the print was underexposed, re-silvering was used to increase density, and high-contrast print stocks were stepped on the print to create a layer of 'dirt', which Fincher likens to a "dirty patina."

In an infamous incident, the Friday that the film was released theatrically in the United States, Rosie O'Donnell appeared on her TV show and revealed that she had seen the film earlier in the week, and had been unable to sleep ever since. She then proceeded to give away the twist ending of the film and urged all of her viewers to avoid the movie at all costs. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and David Fincher discuss this incident on their DVD commentary track, with Pitt calling 'O'Donnell's actions "unforgivable".

Brad Pitt and Edward Norton both really learned how to make soap.

According to Variety magazine, Sarah Michelle Gellar was approached for the role of Marla Singer, but due to a locked contract with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she couldn't get the part.

As noted during Author Chuck Palahniuk and Screenwriter Jim Uhls' commentary, the seminary student/priest hosed by the mechanic is ultimately the winning combatant in the fight sequence immediately following the scene in which narrator beats himself up in front of his boss.

Brad Pitt says he didn't want his parents to see the movie, but he couldn't convince them not to watch. They changed their minds after watching the chemical burn scene.

In the original cut of the film, several specific brands were referenced. Besides the coffee bar (originally a Starbucks Coffee) and the video store (originally a Blockbuster Video) at the receiving end of Project Mayhem, the Narrator clearly referenced Reader's Digest (later changed to the fictional magazine "The Annotated Reader") and specifically referred to the Reader's Digest stories about Joe's body that were written by J.T. Ratcliffe. These product placements were removed at the request of these companies, whose executives did not want such product placements in light of the film's content. This entailed re-recording the Narrator's dialogue to change the character's anatomical references from "Joe" to "Jack."

Kevin Scott Mack:  Digital Domain visual effects supervisor is the terrified guy with glasses in the plane crash scene.

The zip code on Richard Chesler's (Zach Grenier) business card is 198090 (shown briefly in the scene where The Narrator beats himself up in the office). In the shot where we see Tyler Durden's business card (just before The Narrator calls him), The Narrator's thumb is hiding the 6th digit. All we are able to see is 19808...then it's all thumb.

At the airport, the Narrator says "Could you wake up as a different person?" and the camera briefly follows Tyler.

After the car crash, as Tyler nurses the Narrator back to health, the Narrator has a bruise on his head. When the Narrator wakes up the 'next morning' the bruise is completely gone. Whilst some see this as a continuity error, others argue that it indicates more time has passed than just one night (in fact, the Narrator wasn't asleep at all, he was all over the country setting up fight clubs).

On the airplane the Narrator mentions that they have the exact same briefcase. And although Tyler opens his, we never see the contents of the Narrator's.

When going to the convenience store where Raymond K. Hessel works, Tyler gets the gun out of the Narrator's bag. The Narrator obviously didn't know the gun was there, indicated by his astonishment "Is that a gun?", despite the fact that it's his backpack.

When Tyler and the Narrator hit the first car with baseball bats, Tyler hits first, but the alarm is triggered only after the Narrator hits.

When the airport employee "lends" Tyler the car, the Narrator and Tyler get in through the same door. After the crash where Tyler was driving, Tyler pulls the Narrator out of the driver's side of the car.

When the Narrator enters the house prior to seeing the news report of the happy face on the building, he is carrying one of Project Mayhem's folders.

When Tyler and the Narrator are on the bus, the long-haired guy pushes past Tyler without a word, then says "excuse me" as he pushes past the Narrator.

When Tyler Durden calls The Narrator back in the phone booth, the camera slowly tracks in towards the phone. On the left of the phone, a notice can be seen saying "No incoming calls allowed."

The shot of The Narrator shooting himself was originally to have been shot practically using synchronized high speed photosonic cameras, a dummy constructed by makeup supervisor Rob Bottin and live footage of actor Edward Norton. However, the filmmakers couldn't get the shot to look right, so at the last minute they decided to do the scene primarily CG instead of live. Ultimately, live footage of Edward Norton having 180psi of air shot into his mouth (to make his cheeks blow out) was used, but apart from the actual face, the only element of the shot which is real is the spurt of blood coming out of his mouth, everything else is CG.

In the closing seconds of the film after the camera pulls back from the exploding buildings, a single frame of male genitalia can be seen briefly like Brad Pitt's character added in his projectionist job.