Trivia
Anna Kendrick, as the character Stacy Pilgrim, wears the actual name badge of the real-life Stacy, on whom the comic creator, Bryan Lee O'Malley, based the character. (In one of the DVD commentaries, Kendrick specifically asks that someone add this trivia to IMDb.)
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One of the evil exes is portrayed by Mae Whitman who previously performed as the girlfriend of Michael Cera's character in Arrested Development.
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During the editing process, Edgar Wright showed filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Jason Reitman, and Kevin Smith a rough cut of the film, to which they responded positively.
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During the writing of Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright thought of casting Michael Cera as the titular character after watching Arrested Development.
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The stunt doubles of Lucas Lee are the actual stunt doubles for actor Chris Evans. Only a quarter of the doubles resemble Evans.
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Edgar Wright obtained permission to use the famous theme song from the SNES game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, by writing a letter to Nintendo, saying that it is considered to be "the nursery rhyme of this generation". He was also allowed to use the Seinfeld theme song for a sitcom-style sequence.
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In the film Scott Pilgrim is 22 years old and his sister, Stacy Pilgrim, is 18. In real life actor Michael Cera is nearly 3 years younger than actress Anna Kendrick. Likewise, Ellen Wong, who plays 17 year old Knives Chau, is actually 3 years older than Cera.
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When Scott opens the door to receive his package, Michael Cera actually did throw the package over his shoulder into the bin after 30-odd takes (most of which are seen on the "outtakes" of the DVD). However, the signature shown on-screen was a visual effect superimposed onto the paper.
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Edgar Wright told his casting director not to hire any English actors as this was his first North American film. Satya Bhabha, who played Matthew Patel, successfully passed the audition with a non-English accent. Bhabha later revealed he was from London, England.
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Casa Loma, the setting for the scene where Lucas Lee is filming his movie, is a popular filming location in Toronto. It is perhaps most notable to comic book fans as the location used for Professor Xavier's School in X-Men and its sequels.
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Envy Adams' band, "The Clash at Demonhead", is named after a lesser known Nintendo Entertainment System game, "Clash at Demonhead", which was released in the US in 1990. The name is also a play on the influential punk band, The Clash.
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The character Lucas Lee's name consists of the middle names of the comic's creator Bryan Lee O'Malley and the comic's editor James Lucas Jones. He also shares characteristics with skater-turned-actor Jason Lee.
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The name of Scott Pilgrim's band, Sex Bob-Omb, is a reference to the Nintendo video game Super Mario Bros. 2. The game features an enemy character named Bob-omb that looks like a small, round bomb with a lit fuse, legs, and eyes. An image resembling this character is depicted on the band's kick drum. "Sex Bomb" is the name of a song by the punk rock band Flipper, as well as a hit record by singer Tom Jones.
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In the background of the scene at Pizza Pizza (following Scott and Todd's fight), you can see Honest Ed's across the street. Honest Ed's is a popular Toronto department store that Scott and Todd battled in within the books.
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Not all of the comic panel flash back sequences were taken from the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. Bryan Lee O'Malley states in a commentary track that another artist was brought in to illustrate certain segments, and remarks that this person emulated his style quite well.
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Ramona's idea for fighting Roxanne, the fourth evil ex, was originally Scott's idea in the graphic novels to fight Envy Adms.
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In the record store scenes, you can see a Radiohead poster in the background. The film's composer, Nigel Godrich, has worked extensively with Radiohead.
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At the first Battle of the Bands and when fighting the first evil ex Scott is seen wearing a "Plumtree" t-shirt. Plumtree is an all-girl indie rock band that released the song "Scott Pilgrim" on their 1998 album, 'Predicts the Future'. The song became the inspiration for Bryan Lee O'Malley to create the graphic novel's title character.
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The scene where Ramona helps Scott fight Roxy Richter by controlling his arms, because he refuses to hit a girl, resembles a scene in the Free Comic Book Day issue of Scott Pilgrim. In that issue Scott refuses to fight a group of clones of pop singer Winifred Hailey.
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During the scene in the record store when Knives picks up a CD by The Clash at Demonhead Scott throws the CD onto another rack, where the Beck album 'Odelay' is visible. Beck wrote "Ramona" and composed the music for Sex Bob-Omb.
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Matthew Patel (Evil Ex Number#1) sings the song "Slick" to taunt Scott. This differs from the comic book, in which the song is actually a "duel", some parts sung by Scott and Sex Bob-Omb in reply to Patel.
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As a clue to the fights with Evil Exes that Scott will have to endure, there are many "X"s present in the film. Tracks in the snow, shadows on the swing sets all forming the letter "X", as does, ultimately, the X-Men patch on Scott's coat and surrounding "pedestrian crossing" signs.
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At the party where he talks to Ramona for the first time, Scott holds up a very badly drawn picture of Ramona and asks if anyone has seen her. Director Edgar Wright said Scott was originally supposed to hold up a picture of Ramona from the comic book series, but felt the silly drawing Scott holds up was more comedic.
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Edgar Wright has stated the movie was done in the style of a Musical, but instead of the characters breaking into song and dance, they break into a fight. The battle between Scott Pilgrim and Matthew Patel is done in the style of a Bollywood fight scene.
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Scotts "extra life" icon and the sprite animation in the ending titles were designed for the movie by Paul Robertson, who also designed the character artwork of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game for Ubisoft.
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Whenever the moon is shown, it is full and there is a hole in it. Ramona's third boyfriend, Todd Ingram, is mentioned in flashback to have punched the hole there for her when they dated. In the graphic novel, Todd punches a second hole in the moon for Envy Adams.
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Keita Saitou and Shôta Saitô who play Evil Exes number 5 & 6 spoke little to no English at all during filming, and the director said it was bit of a challenge directing them during the fight scene in which they appear. Edgar Wright had to use hand gestures and other crude means of communicating with the actors.
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Sex Bob-Omb has two members - Stephen Stills and Young Neil - whose character names recall members of Crosby Stills Nash & Young - Neil Young and Stephen Stills.
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Like the graphic novel, Scott Pilgrim is seen wearing a t-shirt with the letters "SP" in a heart. While these are Scott's initials, the design is the logo for the band Smashing Pumpkins, an influence of creator Bryan Lee O'Malley. Scott is also seen wearing a "Zero" t-shirt, an iconic shirt often worn by Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan
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The band battle between Sex Bob-Omb (a rock band from Canada) and the Katayanagi Twins (an electronic group from Japan), was performed by Beck and Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada) - a rock musician from America and an electronic musician from Japan, respectively.
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When Scott tells Ramona that "everything is peaches and gravy", he is referencing two of Beck's songs: "Peaches and Cream" and "Nicotine and Gravy", both from the 'Midnite Vultures' album.
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Crash and the Boys are said to hail from Brampton. Brampton, Ontario is a city located outside Toronto, and the home town of Michael Cera.
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Kim Pine becomes visibly upset when she finds out that the rival band "Crash and the Boys" has a girl drummer. All drummers in the movie are girls.
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The film's title, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, comes from the second volume of the graphic novel series. The movie is, however, an adaptation of all six volumes and not that one particular volume. The first book was titled 'Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life' and was the working title of the movie.
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When Scott Pilgrim is talking with 17-year-old Knives Chau during the final fight sequence, a Broken Social Scene song called "Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl" plays in the background.
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At one point in the movie Scott (Michael Cera) proclaims "Double negative" (while he's with Wallace and his lover in bed). Double Negative was the lead visual effects house on this movie.
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The attire of Sex Bob-omb during their performance at the Chaos Theatre matches what they wear near the end of 'Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness'. Young Neil dons the suit and tie that is originally worn by Scott in the book.
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Throughout the film when Scott faces an evil ex, a number corresponding to them appears:
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- Evil Ex 1 = Alpha symbol on his shoulders.
- Evil Ex 2 = 2 on the trailer. 2 on the car. A small tattoo of 2 on his neck. His belt has two X's, XX.
- Evil Ex 3 = 3 on his shirt. Also 3 on the trash cans in the alley.
- Evil Ex 4 = Number 4 on the night club door.
- Evil Ex 5 & 6 = Amp system goes up to 11 (5+6).
- Evil Ex 7 = When Scott goes to see Gideon it mentions it is level 7.
- Scott himself is seen wearing (and drinking) "Zero" a number of times.
The four cast members that made up the band "Sex Bob-Omb" spent several weeks learning how to play together as a band. Mark Webber, Alison Pill and Johnny Simmons all had to learn their instruments from scratch, while Michael Cera had to "dumb down" his bass playing in order to not outshine his band mates.
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Ramona's cat "Gideon" from the comic book series is not in the film, but an image of the same cat is seen on the mug Scott is drinking out of in the beginning of the movie.
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Originally, the film only had a title card at the beginning. It was Quentin Tarantino who suggested to Edgar Wright, late in the stage of post-production, that there should be a pre-title credit sequence. Otherwise the remaining ensemble of characters, yet to be introduced, would have been introduced in a much more rapid succession. The audience might have been overwhelmed with the introduction of characters and plot. With a pre-title sequence the audience is given a chance to relax and have a firmer grasp on the beginning of the film. Wright considered this and agreed, liking the idea that the first scene would now be a prologue.
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The 8-bit Universal logo at the beginning of the film was Edgar Wright's idea; it was then designed by his brother Oscar Wright, the concept designer and storyboard artist on the film. The logo seen in the final film was actually only a first-draft. It was not yet considered finished when test screenings began, but audiences reacted so positively to it that it was decided that no further work need be done.
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Ellen Wong made two homemade Sex-Bob-Omb T-shirts for her character to wear. The one selected by Edgar Wright appears in the movie, the other on the DVD extras.
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The scene where Ramona asks Scott how old Knives is, the roulette wheel in his mind has the following choices: "She's Nobody", "She's Forty!", "Idiot!", "No Speaka English", "When's Dinner", "Uhh...", "Tell Pac Man Story", "No, You Are", "Pass Out", "It Was Nothing", "Who Her?" and "I Gotta Pee".
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The Katayanagi twins reference their X number coincidentally when they select their respective keys on the keyboard. The first twin hits the white key that is both the 6th key from the top and from the bottom of the screen - while the 2nd twin hits the black key that is 5th from the bottom and the 5th black key from the top since you can see the shadow of the top black key, and finally they hit the keys that are inverse to their hair/clothing color.
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In 2009 Edgar Wright started a year long photo blog where he would take at least one picture every day and post it on his website. Much of the cast and crew appeared in this daily photo blog while they were shooting, most of the time with no direct credit given and their faces partially obscured in some way.
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At one point during the battle between Scott and Lucas Lee, a fake New York City backdrop is ripped open to reveal the Toronto skyline. This is referencing the fact that many film productions use Toronto as a location and 'disguise' it to look like New York or some other American city.
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The first draft of the script for the film was completed after only 2 of Bryan Lee O'Malley's 6 "Scott Pilgrim" books were drawn.
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The original concept for "Scott Pilgrim" is based around 2 premises. First, what if, after a life of playing fighting games, someone confronted you and you actually had the ability to fight like a "Street Fighter" character. And second, Bryan Lee O'Malley's was dating his future wife, Hope Larson, when he learned she had dated three different guys named Matthew. This led to the idea of a League of Matthews. This idea developed into the League of Evil Exes and Matthew Patel is the only Evil Ex to keep the name Matthew.
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To avoid an R-Rating, the word "Fuck", said by Envy to Julie, had to be bleeped out because Scott Pilgrim calls Todd Ingram a "cocky-cock" earlier in the film.
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In the scene at Lee's Palace, Wallace Wells and Kim Pine can be seen drinking Molson Canadian beer.
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According to Knives' cell phone, Young Neil's last name is Nordegraf. This fact is also explained in the graphic novel.
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The logo for Lucas Lee's skateboard company, that is tattooed on his chest, resembles an upside down Toronto city flag. It also can be seen as two letter "L"s (one of them backwards,) over a board.
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When Scott first approaches Ramona at the party, a light switch is visible on a wall, seven feet above the ground near the ceiling. The party scene was filmed at a frat house in Canada, and the light switch puzzled the director as well as the crew.
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Ramona's weapon, a giant sledgehammer, may be a nod to the term 'hammer-space'. When a character stores an item too big to fit into a bag, the item is said to be located in the hammer-space within that bag. This is very commonly done in video games. Ramona actually wields a giant hammer from hammer-space in the film.
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The film is heavily inspired by and features numerous references to Nintendo, such as the use of names, imagery, sound effects and music from classic Nintendo games, and scenes featuring various Nintendo video game consoles. Ironically, the video game adaptation of the film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, was only released for Playstation 3 and XBOX 360.
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The band Crash and the Boys is named after an NES/Gameboy game called "Crash 'n the Boys: Street Challenge"
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In the scene where Scott and his friends are walking to Julie's party, there is a building in the background with a lit-up "Flight Center" sign - the L, however, is flickering, so it actually reads "Fight Center".
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In the scene where Scott finally breaks up with Knives in the record store, an instrumental version of "Black Sheep" (the song The Clash at Demonhead perform later on in the movie) is playing in the background. If the song were not the instrumental version, Knives' saying "[she's in] LOVE" and the singer singing "[send you my] LOVE" are synchronized to both happen at the same time.
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Mary Elizabeth Winstead actually memorized ALL of the kinds of tea that her character rambles. Some crew members kept offering for her to just read it from a piece of paper, but she insisted on learning it all.
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The Canadian band Broken Social Scene wrote the two 4 second songs ("we hate you, please die" and "I'm so sad, so very, very, sad") for Crash and the Boys. Metric, another Canadian band wrote the song "Black Sheep" which is performed by Scott's rival band The Clash at Demonhead.
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When Julie is listing the girls whose hearts Scott has broken, she mentions two named Lisa and Hollie. Lisa and Hollie were two secondary characters in the graphic novels that weren't featured in the movie (Lisa went to school with Scott and Kim; Hollie was Kim's co-worker and roommate).
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Roxie Richter's name is a reference to the Castlevania video game series, many of which star a character named Richter who uses whips.
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Whenever a picture of The Clash at Demonhead is shown in the record store, you can hear the store alarm going off in the background.
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The beginning Universal logo for the movie was a custom logo, with an 8-bit version of the original Universal fanfare.
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Posters of various bands in the movie, such as the Katayanagi Twins and The Clash at Demonhead, can be seen in the record store.
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On the close-up of the magazine cover featuring The Clash at Demonhead, their singles are listed as "You Suck" and "Stop Calling Me".
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During the first fight scene, Young Neil is wearing a Sloan t-shirt. Chris Murphy, vocalist and bassist for the band Sloan, served as the music performance supervisor. His job: making sure the actors knew how to play their own instruments for the camera.
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Michael Cera admitted that whilst filming in the record store he ended up buying a lot of albums.
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Cameo
Michael Bacall:
The co-writer of the film can be seen at Julie's party and he's also the guy who asks, "Is he a pirate?" during the Matthew Patel fight.
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Spoilers
With the exception of Gideon, throughout the entire course of the movie there is no blood, broken bones or any kind of injury imposed onto Scott or any Evil Ex.
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The scene where Ramona knees Gideon in the groin saying "Let's both be girls," originally appeared in the graphic novel as Envy kneeing Todd in the groin, after Todd is revealed to have cheated on her with their drummer.
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After Scott defeats Roxy, the fourth evil ex, he can be briefly be seen wearing a shirt with the Fantastic Four logo on it in the next scene at band practice. It is the only time in the movie he wears a number other than "zero." The shirt also has a very small '1/2' written into the logo, making him 4.5, which director Edgar Wright stated on the DVD commentary was a reference to Scott reaching the brink of becoming yet another Evil Ex.
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The moment in the second duel where Scott and Gideon take passing swings at each other and Scott asks "How's it going back there?" is the method by which Scott defeats Roxanne in the comic book. In the book Scott cuts Roxanne in two, while in the film he only injures Gideon.
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Real Canadian coinage was used in all of the sequences where the evil-exes are destroyed. Mark Webber claimed that he pocketed $24.00 from the final scene at the Chaos Theater.
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Watch Roxie Richter. When the camera is on her face, she never blinks. She only blinks in the fight scenes as she starts losing, and when she is defeated.
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After Scott dies in the first fight against Gideon, an arrow appears and points to Scott with the word "dead" written above it. Bryan Lee O'Malley saw this shot and was inspired to put it in the (then) unwritten final book of the Scott Pilgrim series, "Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour".
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Out of all the Evil Exes Scott had to defeat, only one of them he defeats either on his own or just in general. Scott beat Matthew Patel on his own, while Lucas Lee generally killed himself, the Vegan Police helped Scott defeat Todd, Ramona helped Scott defeat Roxie, Stephen Stills and Kim helped Scott defeat the Katayanagi Twins, and Knives helped Scott defeat Gideon.
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