Do we have a Movie Trivia thread? if so, one of the Mods can move this post to it.
If not, well, as Rod Serling would say, "For your consideration..."
Here are many, tho' not all, movie references, throwbacks, real-life obscurities used in
Chicken Run, the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film ever made.
There are 50 of them listed in the Trivia section on IMDB. I didn't mention the ones related to the more technical aspects of production and props development, making of the plasticine chickens. etc.
Babs' knitting is real, done with toothpicks as needles.
Many sequences were modeled after
The Great Escape (1963). When Ginger is digging the tunnel, she is shown on a small trolley being pulled through the tunnel like the character played by Charles Bronson. When she is locked up, she bounces a ball against the wall like the character played by
Steve McQueen. Even the music is similar to the
"Escape" theme.
During the exercise scene, the chickens are seen to perform taekwondo patterns at one point, as one of the animators was also a taekwondo instructor.
According to the tartan of the scarf she is wearing, the Scottish chicken "Mac" (Lynn Ferguson) belongs to clan MacLeod of Lewis, Scotland.
Eggless, ill-fated chicken Edwina is named for Conservative former Health Minister
Edwina Currie, whose political career foundered due to the 1988 salmonella scare that led to egg sales in the UK dropping by 60% and a cull of four million chickens.
"Hut 17" is a reference to the World War II P.O.W. film
Stalag 17 (1953), directed by Billy Wilder. Rocky also says "I've met a lot of hard boiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes," a line from Wilder's film previous to
Stalag 17, Ace in the Hole (1951).
During the screwball "teaching the hens to fly" sequence, Mac, the Scottish chicken, is tossed into the air exactly like a caber in the Highland Games, and, in fact, when she lands on her head and falls facing exactly away from her tosser, this would achieve the maximum possible score for that event.
When the plane is about to take off, Fowler calls, "chocks away!" The chocks are actually triangular bars of chocolate, modeled on the Toblerone brand.
When Rocky first appears on the farm, Fowler denounces him (and all "Yanks") by calling him "overpaid, oversexed, and over here!". This was a common gripe about U.S. service members, expressed by British (and in the Pacific Theater, Australian) troops and civilians during World War II (it has since passed into the vernacular as an expression of mild resentment towards America). The American retort was that their allies were "underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower!". In the same rant, Fowler also claims that Yanks are late for every war. The U.S. entered World War I in 1917, and World War II in (December) 1941, roughly three years after the British had started fighting in each war.
When Mrs. Tweedy measures Babs for the pie machine, she was on elevated rigging, so she would appear to tower over the assembled chickens. She was given different walks to intimidate them.
When Rocky is first introduced, he is seen flying over the coop yelling Freedom. This is a reference to his earlier movie
Braveheart (1995) where he yells freedom towards the end of the movie.
The gaunt, sharp angles of the farmhouse were meant to reflect Mrs. Tweedy's menace.
The decision to make Rocky American came late, to give Ginger and Rocky a Tracey and Hepburn feel, as well as an element of culture clash.
Mac's thick eyeglasses are a reference to the similar glasses worn by
Dustin Hoffman in
Papillon (1973).
Mac sometimes calls Ginger 'hen', a popular term of endearment in Scotland (where Mac is from) for a woman as well as a reference to Ginger being - obviously - a chicken.
The name of Nick the rat is an inside joke. In British slang to "nick" something is to steal it.
There is a reference to
The Simpsons (1989); when Rocky falls in the pie dough, and proclaims "Dough!" in an annoyed manner, which is phonetically similar to Homer Simpson's catchphrase "D'oh!" A year before the release of the movie, Mel Gibson guest starred on
The Simpsons episode "Beyond the Blunderdome" as himself.
During the exercise scene, Bunty is doing her push-ups on one wing only.
Fowler appears to be modeled after the Major in
Fawlty Towers.
When the Chickens are attempting takeoff and Fowler yells for more power, Mac yells back, "We're giving it all she's got, Captain!", a reference to the original
Star Trek TV franchise to Mr Scott's similar response when Kirk called for more power.
After they are airborne they discover Mrs Tweedy has grabbed onto the string of Christmas Tree lights and is making her way up to the "crate", at which time Mac cries out, "It's a cling-on!" [Klingon]
In the scene where Rocky and Ginger escape from Mrs. Tweedy's pie machine, Ginger reaches under a closing door to retrieve her hat similar to Indy's way to retrieve his fedora in
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The model for the Tweedy's house was Norman Bates' home in the original
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, dir.), to further the sense of menace associated
with the Tweedys , but especially Mrs. Tweedy.
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