Trivia for
Swordfish (2001) More at IMDbPro »

• Hugh Jackman had to take stunt driving classes to prepare for his role in Swordfish.
  
  
• The opening scene of Swordfish is the most complicated visual effect in Warner Brothers history. It was shot using Matrix-like effects (The Matrix (1999)) by Frantic Films of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The effect has so many composites in it that the producers and director of the film could not determine what was real and what was created by computer.
  
  
• The title comes from the classic 1932 Marx Brothers' film, Horse Feathers (1932). "Swordfish" was the password for entering the speakeasy - one of the movie's funniest scenes - and became the archetypal password (at least for older movie-goers).
  
  
• The car that Gabriel drives is a British-made TVR Tuscan. The car is not sold in the United States because of its emissions levels.
  
  
• Trailers, television commercials, and print advertisements for the film all contained "passwords" which allowed viewers to play a contest game on the film's official website. A password also appears in the closing credits. (See "Crazy Credits").
  
  
• The film was withdrawn from cinemas shortly after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC on 11 September 2001, due to a scene involving an exploding building.
  
  
• The side of Shear's bus reads: Don't get burned by viruses, protect your system. It's an ad for an anti virus program. During the car chase scene, Shear and Jobson are nearly hit by a garbage truck, and speed through a busy intersection. Two scenes, which are mimicked from Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) also directed by Dominic Sena.
  
  
• There is a shot in this movie virtually identical to one in X-Men (2000) featuring the same actors. After meeting Gabriel for the first time, Stanley (Hugh Jackman) is seen throwing water on his face while Ginger (Halle Berry) watches over his left shoulder in the background. In X-Men, after losing Rogue to Magneto at the train station, Jackman (as Wolverine) is seen throwing water on his face while Berry (as Storm) watches over his left shoulder in the background.
  
  
• 2600 'The Hacker Quarterly' magazine was approached by Warner Bros. for permission to use their magazine and name in the film. WB was suing 2600 at the time for linking to the DVD deciphering program DeCSS. The magazine said no.
  
  
• The helicopter is a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane (CH-54 Tarhe). It is now being used to fight bush fires across Australia.
  
  
• The scene in which the school bus is swung was actually shot by hiring a group of people to sit in a bus, in front of a blue screen, while they swung the bus from a crane. According to the stunt coordinators, the same effect could have been portrayed for half the cost.
  
  
• When Gabriel is explaining everything to Stan and motions to a mock-up of the bank robbery, the model bus is a replica of Bus 2525 from the film Speed (1994/I).
  
  
• On the floor of Holly's room, a copy of the cult cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" by William Gibson is visible.
  
  
• Zach Grenier's character Bill Joy is named after the co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy.
  
  
• Unlike many Hollywood movies, in "Swordfish", the amount of the ammunition in firearms is depicted correctly. During the chase sequence, Gabriel fires a total of 89 shots from M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, which carries a 200 round box.
  
  
• At one point during Stanley's attempt to hack into the Department of Defense database, his screen shows six numbers that appear to be IP addresses. (The first is 213.225.312.5.) The numbers between decimal points in an IP address, called "octets", are decimal representations of 8-bit numbers (8 binary digits of either 0 or 1). Therefore, the range of decimal numbers for an octet is 0 to 255, because 11111111 in binary is 255 in decimal. The IP addresses on Stanley's screen each contain one octet higher than 255 (such as 312 in the first example), which is apparently the filmmakers' way of ensuring that no one's real IP address appeared.
  
  
• Axl Torvalds is said to be a Finn, but he is speaking German with his lawyer.
  
  
• The climax was originally intended to be an airport shootout.
  
  
• John Travolta turned down the part of Gabriel a total of 6 times. He changed his mind when he heard director Dominic Sena's take on it.
  
  
• Halle Berry agreed to the topless scene - ostensibly for an extra fee of $500,000 - because she wanted to overcome her fear of doing nude scenes. This was on top of her initial fee of $2 million.
  
  
• John Travolta was paid $20 million for his role.
  
  
• The dramatic explosion at the start of the film was captured using 135 synchronized still cameras.
  
  
• 6 TVRs were imported especially to be used for Gabriel's car.
  
  
• Nick Nolte was originally considered for the senator part that eventually went to Sam Shepard.
  
  
• Drea de Matteo filmed all her scenes in one day.
  
  
• John Cusack and Val Kilmer were considered for the part of Stanley. Ultimately, director Sena opted for Hugh Jackman because he didn't bring too much baggage from other films with him.
  
  
• The actors would all be reacting to blank computer screens. The graphics were added later.
  
  
• Rudolf Martin plays Axl Torvalds, a hacker of some renown in the film. The character is named after Linus Torvalds, a "hacker" in real life, who wrote the original code for the open source computer Operating System named after him, Linux. Axl and his real life counterpart, Linus, are both Finnish as well.
  
  

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