Did You Know?
This movie has gained cult status on video. Mike Judge has said more people talk to him about this movie than any project he has ever worked on. Also, he doubts there will be a sequel, due to poor box office.
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When Peter is in the meeting room, on the white board behind him there is a complicated flow chart titled "Planning to Plan."
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Gary Cole's character wears a large, gold class ring of the style that are common for graduates from military academies. This ring was originally a prop produced for the short-lived science fiction series Crusade, on which Cole played captain Matthew Gideon. The ring was worn in every episode, and was supposed to show that Gideon was a graduate of Earthforce Military Academy. "Office Space" was the first project Cole worked on following the cancellation of Crusade and wore the ring as an in-joke, referring to his previous job.
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The set for Chotchkie's is actually the restaurant "the Alligator grille" in Austin, Texas. The Alligator Grille closed down as of 2009.
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Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) lives in the "Morningwood Apartments", a reference to a frequent theme of director Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head.
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At the party for Tom (Richard Riehle) Drew (Greg Pitts) has a conversation with Peter (Ron Livingston) in which he lists all of the men that have slept with Peter's girlfriend Joanna (Jennifer Aniston). Among those he mentions is David Rennie, the film's editor
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Smykowski's Lawyer (Rob Newhouse) shares his name with Robert Newhouse, a well-known player for the Dallas Cowboys in the '70s-'80s. The team is based in Texas where Judge, the director, grew up.
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Chotchkie's is a take-off on the popular T.G.I. Friday's restaurant chain. The T.G.I. Friday's waiting staff wear striped shirts and suspenders adorned with buttons and name tags. The restaurants themselves are frequently decorated with assorted knick-knacks and memorabilia. A reference is made to T.G.I. Friday's when someone mentions "Thank God it's Friday" while at the restaurant.
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On Peter's personnel file, his address is shown to be 191 N. Lamar, Flander, IL 77070. (77070 is actually the zip code for Houston, Texas. N. Lamar is a popular street in Austin, TX where The Alligator Grille (filming location for Chotchkie's) is located.) His mother's name is Suzi Gibbons and lives at 11004 Marble Rd., Erie, NY 05452 (actually a Vermont zip code).
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The directory that the bank software virus is stored on is "C:/LR427/Virus_CDEF" CDEF is a virus that dates back to 1990 and affected Macintoshes. It infects desktop files and can cause system crashes, anomalous behavior, and printing problems. It is obsolete now and was mostly harmless. It should be noted that "C:" relates to MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
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The infamous "PC Load Letter" error that confounded Michael Bolton is a message that the printer was out of, or not recognizing the refill of Letter-sized (8.5x11 inches) paper. "PC" stands for "Paper Cartridge". Older model HP Laserjet printers commonly display this error. This error also occurs when attempting to print a non-letter-sized project onto letter-sized paper.
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The iconic red stapler coveted by Milton was created for the film by the prop department. They needed a bright enough color to be seen on film and chose red. After the film was released, Swingline began to receive requests from customers for red staplers. Having stopped offering red a number of years before, they made the decision to start offering the color once more.
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After the movie became a cult item, Mike Judge was offered a chance to make a sequel called "Office Space 2: Still Renting". But Judge said that he had been through enough anguish over the first one that he didn't want to put himself through the experience again.
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Began as a short animated skit on Liquid Television, Fall 1992. Directed by Mike Judge, it consisted of Lumbergh telling Milton to move his desk and then he takes his stapler, then Milton wants to burn the building down. This was later followed by the same on Saturday Night Live.
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While in the car to Tom's party, Peter, played by Ron Livingston mentions to Joanna that the Nazis had "pieces of flair" they made Jews wear. In Band of Brothers, Livingston's character of Lewis Nixon assists in the liberation a Nazi concentration camp.
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The traffic jam in the opening scene was filmed on W Braker Lane near the Pickle Research Center in Austin, Texas.
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When Peter arrives at his job during the fire, he pulls up to the fire lane where the firetruck in the background should be.
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When Peter and Joanna go to Tom's house for the BBQ, the shot of the backyard clearly indicates it is identical to the one used in Edward Scissorhands.
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The abbreviation TPS (as referenced in the infamous "TPS Report") is undefined in the final cut of the film. TPS is used in the software industry to stand for "Test Procedure Specification", which is a set of steps used by quality assurance testers to follow in testing a given software feature; given this meaning, however, a "TPS Report" would make little sense. Director/creator Mike Judge has said (after innumerable queries from fans) that he meant the abbreviation to stand for "Test Program Set".
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Peter mentions that he (and presumably the other programmers) are working on fixing the "year 2000 problem" in Initech's banking software. This issue, often referred to as "Y2K" or the "millennium bug", was a real problem dealt with by many companies in the late 1990s. Peter accurately describes the issue as being related to a space-saving shortcut used by programmers (mostly in the 1960s-70s) where the year portion of date-related data was stored as two digits (e.g. "75" instead of "1975"). The expectation was that software written in such a way would fail -- perhaps catastrophically -- when the year changed from 1999 ("99") to 2000 ("00"). However, largely thanks to a massive effort on the part of the software and financial industries, most of the issues were resolved before the deadline, and the millennium change occurred with few issues.
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Director Cameo
Mike Judge:
Stan, Joanna's boss at Chotchkie's. He's listed in the credits as "William King."
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Director Trademark
Mike Judge:
[water tank]
Visible through Tom's back door at the insurance-settlement party.
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