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Preface

500 Things You Didn't Know About Stranger Things

References

PREFACE

Do you want more arcane Stranger Things trivia than you can shake at a Demogorgon at? Well, you've come to the right place. The following volume contains all manner of trivia relating to the blockbuster Netflix show. There are facts, among many other topics way too numerous to mention, about the origins of the show, the cast, special effects, monsters, Dungeons & Dragons, guns & weapons, Vecna, the Mind Flayer, episodes, Easter eggs, and pop culture influences in both film and literature.

I have avoided anything TOO obvious (you don't really need to be told, for example, that Stranger Things is a bit like Stephen King's The Mist or that it homages Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial umpteen times in the first season - you already KNOW this sort of stuff) and planted my focus more on the sort of stuff that you might not know - as opposed to the obvious. One thing I've mostly avoided here too is anachronisms or goofs - where a food product or song which is too contemporary for the 1980s is erroneously included in an episode. This sort of stuff is quite interesting and can be fun but it would be a bit tedious to endlessly list all the anachronisms in the show.

Much of the material in this book comes my own personal fandom of Stranger Things and things I've noticed while watching the show but I am also indebted to some invaluable research sources. The must buy Telos Publishing book Upside Down: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Stranger Things Companion (which is by far the best Stranger Things book available if you ask me) by James Forster and also the fun 1000 Facts About Stranger Things by Nick Bryce were both handy reference points - as too was the Stranger Things Wiki.

500 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT STRANGER THINGS

(1) Vecna's lair (which is officially known as his Mindscape) and Henry Creel's first wander through the terrifying (not that Henry finds it terrifying - he seems to love the place!) Upside Down was partly inspired by some of the bleaker work of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich, who died in 1840, was known for depicting solitary figures in lonely landscapes.

(2) Finn Wolfhard said that when he had to kiss Millie Bobby Brown in the season one finale The Upside Down he sort of accidentally head-butted her. He thinks this is why she famously didn't seem to enjoy the kiss very much at the time!

(3) In Stranger Things 4, Eleven has to go into a sensory deprivation tank in the missile silo in order to retrieve her memories and hopefully get her powers back. Millie Bobby Brown said she had a couple of intense days during the production of season four where she spent up to ten hours a day in the tank and suffered from acute claustrophobia as a consequence. The water had loads of salt so she could float easily and they had to use a large overhead microphone to relay instructions because it was very difficult for her to hear anything - what with her ears often being underwater!

(4) In order to get the likeness for the little 1979 version of Eleven in Stranger Things 4, the special effects department used clips from Once Upon a Time in Wonderland - a television show which Millie Bobby Brown appeared in when she was nine years-old - as a reference.

(5) Stranger Things was loosely inspired by Camp Hero at Montauk - which is obviously why the show was originally going to have this title. Montauk is a village on the tip of Long Island. There is an old decommissioned military base there called Camp Hero which was one of the SAGE radar stations of Air Defense Command. The main purpose of these stations was to warn of any threat of nuclear attack. The base at Camp Hero, though apparently abandoned now, is still fenced off and guarded. The imposing Cold War radar still stands - silent and motionless. A number of conspiracies have been floated in relation to the base. There are stories that the government secretly buried a nuclear reactor there and it is often alleged to have been part of the secret MK-Ultra project (which was basically a clandestine experiment by the CIA to see if mind control and remote viewing was actually real). In 1992, Preston B. Nichols (along with Peter Moon) wrote a book called The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time in which Nichols claimed that after discovering he was a 'telepath' he had visited Montauk - where the caretaker of the old military base seemed to know who he was. Nichols claims that he was once in charge of a secret project at Camp Hero which opened a rip in time and made him experience alternate realities. That was merely the tip of the iceberg as Camp Hero was also allegedly subject to aliens, monsters, and time travel.

The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time rather gives the game away in the introduction when it invites us to read the book that follows as a work of fiction should we choose. No one in their right mind believed that this book had any basis in reality. Nonetheless, the conspiracy theories related to Camp Hero tickled the imaginations of the Duffers and made them want to set the show in Montauk. In the original pilot script for the show Jim Hopper lives in a shack on the beach and the Byers house is right next to Camp Hero. While the general story and concepts in the show remained the same it did have a very different atmosphere and aura by moving the action from Long Island to Indiana. In the original early concept for the show, when it was still called Montauk, there were even plans to have everything take place in a blanket of heavy snow. A sort of Stranger Things meets 30 Days of Night.

(6) The 1979 version of Eleven makes a 'superhero landing' (head down, one knee, arms apart) in The Massacre at Hawkins Lab after vanquishing Henry Creel at the lab. This is a nice payoff given Eleven's depression earlier in the season at the loss of her powers. She's finally a superhero once again. The 'superhero landing' (which is mocked in the film Deadpool) is associated with characters like Black Widow in the Marvel movies but goes way back. Iron Man has been depicted with his own unique 'landing' in the comics for decades. You can see examples of the superhero landing in Japanese anime, The Matrix trilogy, and the Blade movies with Wesley Snipes - which all obviously predate the MCU.

(7) The casting in Stranger Things was quite lucky in that the stars seemed to align in allowing the Duffer Brothers to get the perfect people for these roles - regardless of how famous they were or how much acting experience they did or didn't have. Joe Keery was working as a waiter when he auditioned for the show while Shannon Purser had never done any professional acting and was still at school and working part-time in a cinema. Millie Bobby Brown's family had moved back to England and she had become disillusioned with acting after a series of failed auditions. She was then told about Montauk (to become Stranger Things) and reluctantly taped an audition in an American accent. Caleb McLaughlin, who had worked primarily on the stage as a child actor, was also bruised by a number of failed auditions and very nearly didn't bother to go to the Montauk auditions. Finn Wolfhard, like Millie Bobby Brown, sent in a taped audition (from his home in Canada).

Finn was only available because of a change of director on the (Stephen King) IT movie. He had to wait to see if the new director still wanted him for the part of Richie Tozier. If there hadn't been a change of director and delay on IT then Finn Wolfhard wouldn't have been in Stranger Things. Winona Ryder was the first person targeted by the show but they had no idea if she would be interested or even return their phone calls. The hiring of Winona Ryder was a great coup for the show because it meant they had a genuine star name to headline the project. This meant that they could cast whoever they wanted in the other parts - even if they were not big names. Charlie Heaton was a former rock band drummer with little acting experience when he auditioned for Montauk. He did a video cam audition and then completely forgot about it. Months later he was woken up in bed in England at 4 in the morning by the Duffers on the telephone telling him he had the part of Jonathan Byers.

Gaten Matarazzo was a Broadway kid who hadn't done much screen acting but Shawn Levy and the Duffers decided he had to be in the show as soon as they met him. Gaten's cleidocranial dysplasia (a condition which meant he didn't have any teeth) made Gaten's agent fear he wouldn't secure any acting work but Stranger Things happily proved this fear was unfounded. Noah Schnapp thought he had messed up his audition because he had a headache that day. He put it out of mind and forget about it. He was at summer camp when the Duffers telephoned to say he had the part of Will Byers. It would probably be stretching things to say that David Harbour was an unknown actor at the time of his casting as Hopper for he was an experienced actor with many credits but he definitely wasn't a leading man until the Duffers came along. The Duffers decided to cast Harbour as Hopper after watching him in a television show called Manhattan - which was about the development of the first atomic bomb. Harbour played a scientist named Dr Reed Akley in Manhattan. Had any network been casting Stranger Things they would in all probability have gone for a bigger name as Hopper (even the pitch booklet for Montauk by the Duffers suggested Sam Rockwell was the sort of name who could play Hopper) than David Harbour. The hunch by the Duffers that Harbour was perfect for Hopper turned out to be right though as you couldn't really imagine anyone else in the part now.

(8) While he was in the makeup chair being transformed into Vecna on the set of Stranger Things 4, Jamie Campbell Bower would play some thrash metal tunes to help him get into character. Ironically, another song he listened to a lot was Placebo's cover of Running Up That hill.

(9) As any Stranger Things fan worth their salt will already know, the show was originally going to be called Montauk and set by the coast. When these plans were abandoned they had to come up with a brand new title. The titles they considered were The Rift, The Nether, Sentinel, Flickers, The Keep, The Tesseract, and Wormhole. The Keep was the title of a weird by cultish Michael Mann horror film and The Tesseract was the title of an Alex Garland novel so no prizes for originality of those two fronts (which probably explains why they were not chosen). A title they nearly settled on was Indigo but Matt Duffer eventually came up with Stranger Things - which was inspired by the Stephen King story Needful Things. Ross Duffer and lead actor David Harbour did not like Stranger Things as the new title at all and made their feelings known. However, no one could think of anything better so Stranger Things became the new name of the show.

(10) The United States Department of Energy is not in reality, you won't be surprised to learn, involved in the development of super powered children in real life. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 and is involved in energy research and production. This department is heavily involved in the United States nuclear program and has many facilities and laboratories around the country. Because these facilities - for obvious reasons of national security - are sometimes rather secretive (even mysterious) this gave the Duffer Brothers enough wriggle room to depict the fictitious Hawkins Department of Energy as a sinister place led by a man (Brenner) with a questionable sense of ethics.

The Hawkins Department of Energy exteriors you see in the show are the former Georgia Mental Health Institute - which operated as a psychiatric hospital from 1965 to 1997. The hospital and its campus were then purchased by Emory University with the intention of turning this building and land into a biotech hub. When these plans were abandoned this allowed the Stranger Things production team to use the building for their foreboding exterior shots of the lab. There are now plans to demolish the building and build an old people's home on the site. Patrick Henry High School, a defunct school building in located in Stockbridge, Georgia, which doubles for the Hawkins schools in the show, is also due for demolition to make way for a new school to be built on the site. It seems that many of the most famous Stranger Things 'landmarks' may not exist for much longer so visit them and get a photograph while you still can!

(11) When they shot the scene in episode eight of season two where Dustin explains that the Flayer has an urge to conquer and considers itself superior and Steve replies by saying "Like the Germans", Charlie Heaton laughed so much that he had to leave the set so they could finish the scene.

(12) When his sequel Avatar - The Way of Water came out, James Cameron talked about future Avatar sequels and commented that footage of the younger actors in the franchise was already in the can for use in later installments to avoid what he called the 'Stranger Things effect' of actors being preposterously older than the characters they are playing. While one could understand the general point he was making (one thinks of Walt in the TV show Lost - where the child actor Malcolm David Kelley had to be written out of the show because he hit puberty and was patently aging too quickly for the timeline of the story), Cameron's specific reference to Stranger Things made no sense whatsoever. Millie Bobby Brown was only 17 when she made Stranger Things 4. It's not as if she was a 33 year-old pretending to be a high schooler. Noah Schnapp was even younger than Millie. Stranger Things does also incorporate a time jump between each season. It isn't as if all the seasons take place in the same week.

(13) The body double for the young 1979 lab version of Eleven in Stranger Things 4 was child actor Martie Blair. Blair was best known for playing Bella in the soap opera The Young and the Restless. She even shaved her hair to play the young Eleven in Stranger Things 4. CGI was used to impose the likeness of a younger Millie Bobby Brown over Blair's face. Although Martie Blair sort of resembles a nine year-old version of Millie Bobby Brown they decided this would be the most realistic thing to do. Blair worked a lot with Millie Bobby Brown on the set in order to mimic Millie's body language and movements as Eleven. The results were certainly impressive - aside from one slightly awkward shot where the young Eleven is looking up at Henry Creel. During post-production Millie had to use something called the Lola machine to copy Martie's movements so that her likeness could be imposed.

(14) In the original plan for Stranger Things 2, Eleven was going to 'mercy kill' her catatonic mother Teresa 'Terry' Ives. Upon reflection though the writers decided this might be rather too dark and so excised this detail from the scripts.

(15) The average length of a Stranger Things episode is 61 minutes. This is mostly due to season four - which had an average episode length of 86 minutes. That was considerably longer than than the previous three seasons. There is no standard length for an episode of the show. They can run for however long the Duffer Brothers decide.

(16) The highest rated episode of Stranger Things on IMDB is The Massacre at Hawkins Lab with 9.6. This is certainly not a bad shout at all as The Massacre at Hawkins Lab is a spectacular episode and deserving of the highest praise. Stranger Things 4 actually bucks a trend on IMDB because in all the previous three seasons the finale was always the highest rated episode on the site. That isn't the case with season four - where the finale The Piggyback only ranks third after The Massacre at Hawkins Lab and Dear Billy.

(17) Millie Bobby Brown thinks that when it comes to Eleven and Dr Brenner, Eleven developed a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors.

(18) By far the least popular arc of season four with fans was Hopper's incarceration in a Russian prison. This was not helped by the fact that he spent the ENTIRE season there. Hopper actually escaped twice but still kept going back to the prison! While there was some sterling acting by David Harbour and an exciting climax to the Russian portion of season four, it remains the fact that you don't tune into Stranger Things to watch a prison drama. There are plenty of other places you can get that.

(19) You may have noticed that Keith, who was the Palace Arcade manager in season two and the hiring boss at Family Video at the end of season three, was completely absent from Stranger Things 4. This was because Matty Cardarople, who plays Keith in the show, suffered a stroke in real life and needed some time to recover. Matty is apparently doing better now and has hopes that Keith might make an appearance in Stranger Things 5.

(20) By 1985 there were about 12,000 video stores in the United States. Steve and Robin would certainly have had no shortage of customers at Family Video in Hawkins.

(21) The production of the first season of Stranger Things was incredibly low-key in hindsight. There was practically no coverage when it began shooting and hardly any promotion when it was due to be released. Many members of the cast presumed the show would fly under the radar and quickly be forgotten (which would obviously have kiboshed any hope of a second season). In a sense then one can see how shrewd Netflix executives were in their approach. They were confident that the show was good and would have a lot of mainstream appeal so they worked on the basis that good word of mouth would propel the show to success. In the end this is exactly what happened. Netflix were so confident in the show that they secretly asked the Duffers to begin writing season two before season season one had even come out. This confidence all proved more than justified.

(22) Matt and Ross Duffer said that after the success of season one in 2016 they wrote down every idea they could think of in relation to what could happen in the show and where it might go. There were so many ideas that they couldn't possibly use all of them in Stranger Things 2 so what they did was 'bank' the unused ideas and put them on ice for possible use in the future. Some of the unused concepts in Stranger Things 2 will actually form the basis of Stranger Things 5 - the fifth and final season of the show. This was an object lesson in how to play the creative long game!

(23) David Harbour was appearing in a play called Mad House in London's West End when the second volume of season four dropped on Netflix. Harbour said at the time he hoped that a lot of people would come out to see 'Hopper' in the flesh and then get into the play and forget all about Stranger Things.

(24) Stranger Things merch has, not surprisingly, exploded with the immense popularity of the show around the world. What is though the most valuable Stranger Things item on the market? Well, it appears to be a Hopper Gold Funko autographed by David Harbour. This is valued at $6,500.

(25) David Harbour lost eighty pounds to play Hopper in season four. He did this with Pilates and occasional fasting. Pilates is a form of exercise that focuses on balance, posture, strength and flexibility. Harbour said the weight loss isn't something he plans to do again in a hurry and that he eventually put most of the weight back on. It was certainly a far cry from Stranger Things 3 - where Harbour deliberately put weight on to make Hopper seem slobby and someone who was indulging in too much comfort eating.

(26) Matthew Modine said that when he was given the part of Dr Brenner he found that the character had an awful lot of expositional dialogue. He asked that this dialogue be given to other characters in Brenner's scenes so that Brenner could come across as a man of few words - which made him more mysterious.

(27) David Harbour, as you probably know, is married to the British singer Lily Allen. They didn't meet at some swanky celebrity function though. Oh no. They actually met on the ultra-exclusive dating app Raya.

(28) The exterior used for the Byers house in the early seasons was a real house at 149 Coastline Road in Fayetteville, Georgia. In 2022 this house was put up for sale for $300,000 and sold in one week. One buyer bid $600,000 so it went for well above the asking price. The house will reportedly be turned into an Airbnb. It was estimated that it would cost $100,000 to make the three bedroom house modern and ship shape.

(29) Gaten Matarazzo said it only really dawned on him that Stranger Things was a big deal and he was now famous when he saw a Lego version of his character Dustin Henderson.

(30) Finn Wolfhard had a bone to pick with the bike Mike Wheeler had to ride in season one. Finn said the gears didn't work and it was like trying to pedal a tank. As a consequence of this Finn did not enjoy the cycling scenes featuring the kids because they left him feeling as if he had just run a marathon. He was doubly unlucky on season one because the kids rode their bikes a lot.

(31) If anyone stole Stranger Things 4 from under the noses of the regular cast (though the regular cast were pretty amazing themselves) it was Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson. When they were casting this role, for the auditions the Duffers made the would be Eddie Munsons do the scene where we first meet Eddie in the school canteen. Now, this is not an easy scene to do because there is a lot of dialogue and Eddie has to be quite manic and slightly crazed but also veer on the right side of likeable. A tricky balancing act you might say. He also has to be charismatic too. There were then a lot of boxes to tick and hoops to jump through for any actor performing this challenging audition. According to the Duffers this audition scene certainly separated the wheat from the chaff and it was Joseph Quinn who rose to the top of the pile by performing it with gusto and perfect timing. They knew right away they had their Eddie Munson and Quinn's performance in season four more than validated this decision.

(32) Argyle's trusty pizza van in season four is a 1984 Volkswagen Vanagon.

(33) Chase Stokes, star of the Netflix show Outer Banks, said he auditioned to play Steve Harrington in Stranger Things but messed up his audition by forgetting most of his lines. Banks did still appear in the show though - if only briefly. He played a student named Reed in the season one episode The Monster.

(34) Hopper's firearm in seasons one and three is a Smith & Wesson Model 66. This gun was used by Sheriff Will Teasle in First Blood. It was also used by Sheriff Pope in Wayward Pines - a show that the Duffers worked on early in their career.

(35) The character with the most lines in a season four episode is Dustin Henderson with 55 in The Massacre at Hawkins Lab.

(36) The Morten Harket quiff sported by Steve Harrington in season one was expressly designed to make him visually annoying. Steve is outrageously self-absorbed and arrogant in much of season one and his pompadour hairstyle is all you need to know about his character. This is clearly a kid who spends an awful lot of his time gazing adoringly into the mirror. The construction of Steve as the irritating and often obnoxious teen villain of season one was masterful in hindsight. Not only did it serve to make Jonathan punching him in the alley one of the most cathartic moments in the history of the show but it also made the rehabilitation of Steve in the back end of season one more surprising and more effective. Steve's remarkable hair survived beyond season one but it became part of his new action hero status. Steve Harrington's hair was officially no longer annoying.

(37) Due to Covid restrictions - and doubtless time and expense - Dacre Montgomery shot his nightmare flashback cameo as Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things 4 in Australia and then it was spliced in with the episode Dear Billy. Despite his lack of interaction with the cast, Montgomery's usual intensity is plain to see and he more than makes the most of his chance to play Billy again.

(38) Kate Bush famously has an important sonic role in Stranger Things 4 as the musical guardian of Max Mayfield. When the producers decided that they wanted to use her song Running Up That Hill in the show they had to, as is custom, approach the artist to ask permission. Given that Kate Bush is rather reclusive and enigmatic and not known for wildly embracing the mainstream of popular culture (she once turned down an offer to sing the theme song for the Bond film Moonraker) it was certainly open to question whether or not contact would be made - let alone permission to use Running Up That Hill. To the delight of the Duffer Brothers though it transpired that Kate Bush was actually a big fan of Stranger Things and more than happy to let her song be used in the show. This though is not necessarily the rule but rather the exception. The Stranger Things producer and director Shawn Levy has said that they do get a surprising amount of rejections when they request permission to use famous songs.

(39) The diorama of Hopper's cabin that Eleven takes to school at the start of season four is in a box for Reebok sneakers.

(40) The film mentioned the most when the Duffers talk about the influences of Stranger Things is the 1987 Clive Barker film Hellraiser. In this film an ordinary house hides a dark secret. A man named Frank is secretly lurking the attic. He solved a puzzle box called the Lament Configuration and opened a doorway to another dimension - which looked an awful lot like Hell. Demonic figures known as Cenobites emerged and killed Frank in a most grisly fashion. Or did they? Frank is resurrected by blood but in order to fully repair his body he's going to need an awful lot more. It isn't just the dimensional angle to Hellraiser which connects it to Stranger Things but also the special effects. Hellraiser was made in the last era of practical effects and this movie is what inspired the Duffers to go for a 50/50 split on practical/digital effects in season one (which definitely wouldn't be the case on later seasons). In season four Vecna owes quite a bit to Pinhead - the chief villain of the Hellraiser franchise. Pinhead, like Vecna, is not a manic crazed monosyllabic horror monster. He's articulate and calm.

(41) Jamie Campbell Bower needed 25 pieces of latex and silicone rubber glued to his body to transform into Vecna. The reason they wanted an actor in a suit for Vecna is that they wanted to go back to the DNA of season one where the Demogorgon was mostly Mark Steger in an elaborate monster suit. The fact that Bower was on the set as Vecna interacting with the actors was a great advantage because if Vecna had been a special effect then the cast would have had to react to a tennis ball on a piece of string or something and Vecna would have been added in months later as a digital effect.

(42) Eggo waffles were invented in San Jose, California, by three brothers, Tony, Sam, and Frank Dorsa. They also had their own brand of mayonnaise and potato chips. There was even an Eggos restaurant in Redondo Beach at one point. In 1953, the Dorsa brothers, after perfecting a method of cooking and freezing waffles, introduced Eggo frozen waffles to supermarkets throughout the United States. The Eggo brand was purchased by Kellogs in 1968. Does Millie Bobby Brown like eggo waffles? This is a question that has long occupied the minds of the greatest academics in the world. Millie has, for her art, been nibbling on waffles since 2015 on Stranger Things sets. Season one saw the most waffle action for Millie as Mike Wheeler often smuggled them down into the basement for Eleven when she was a little fugitive on the run from Brenner's sinister lab.

On her

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Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.09.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-5165-5

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