50 things you never knew about The Lord of the Rings

the Lord of the Rings trilogy arguably one of the most iconic and beloved film series of all time has captivated audiences for Years yet even for those who watched it like myself countless times there are still many hidden gems and fascinating behindth scen stories that often go unnoticed in this video we've gathered 50 intriguing facts about the trilogy all to test your knowledge so grab a pen and paper and keep track of how many you recognize and when you're done watching the video drop your final score in the comments below to see how well you

did but now let's dive into the world of Lord of the Rings did you know that the scene where Lurch throws the knife right at Aragon and he then deflects it that was actually for real he wasn't supposed to throw it straight at Vigo but was supposed to throw it and Miss with a great deal and then a different camera angle would make it look like it was a close call instead he threw it right at vgo and he deflected it by reflex and that turned out to be a really cool shot that they kept

in the movie did you know that in order to create the or and Uruk army chants of The Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson really wanted to do it with real people and not just do it artificially by multiplying voices so he went to a stadium in New Zealand and had the spectators chant specific black speech lines that they could then record he also got them to do other various Army sounds such as stomping their feet and beating their chests which is why the Army sounds sound so realistic in the movie did you know that

for the charge of the rim in the Return of the King arguably one of the most epic scenes in the trilogy 250 horses from around New Zealand were used and every rider was trained in traditional Cavalry tactics to make the scene as realistic as possible in the book there was actually 6,000 horses in this scene and Peter Jackson has confirmed that it's the same amount that can be seen in the movie obviously they use CGI for the other 5,750 horses but I still think it's really cool that they try to match the amount of horses

that were in the book and that they still use so many real horses for all of the close-ups to make the scene as realistic as possible did you know that the filmmakers actually considered portraying Sauron in a physical form during the return of the king's final battle but ultimately decided to keep his appearance limited to the eye there are actually a couple of deleted scenes where you can see Sauron going straight out into the battle and actually fighting Aragon multiple of the shots with Aragon was actually filmed with this in mind some of which was

then reused to the Final Shots that ended up in the movie with Aragon fighting the troll this troll was actually supposed to be Sauron and they simply changed it digitally to a troll instead during the filming of the two towers when Aragon washes up on the shore after war attack V Mortenson was nearly Swept Away by a strong current in the river he narrowly avoided a real life disaster when the crew pulled him to safety and this was yet another of the scenes that they suggested would be done with a stunt double but bigo Morton

and won't wanted to do it himself to give his best performance possible did you know that RN was supposed to have a much larger role in The Two Towers and specifically at Helm's Deep this was entirely cut from the movie but there is still a few frames where you can see her where they forgot to digitally painter out of the shot if you look carefully here you can see leget gimble and Aragon retreating back over this bridge and through the gate and initially Arvin was supposed to be here so they digitally painted her out but

once they get past the gate you you can actually see Arvin for a couple of frames right here with her red dress and this is actually in the official movie so look carefully the next time you watch it and you will spot Arwin despite her actually not being there did you know that Gandalf the gry actually stores his pipe inside his staff it's pretty hard to see in most parts of the movie but in particular when he first meets saan at orank you can clearly see that he stuffed his pipe inside the staff unfortunately I'm

assuming he lost his pipe together with his staff when he fell with the bog in Moria David Bowie almost played the role of Elon he even auditioned for it but there was mixed reasons to why he didn't get it both because of touring commitments but also because Peter Jackson wanted to have relatively unknown actors for as many roles as possible even if they of course still had some famous actors in there they actually made over 40 different versions of the one ring or the trilogy each with different sizes and materials depending on the needs of

a particular shot or scene one example of this is this huge ring that was was made particularly for this shot up on the mountain when Frodo drops the ring and bmer picks it up in order to get all of these details look beautifully in the shot they made a really big ring instead of doing a closeup with a small one Christopher Lee the oldest cast member of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was the only cast member to actually have met tolkin and would occasionally correct Peter Jackson on lore when filming as Christopher Lee Read

The Lord of the Rings trilogy on a annual basis and another famous thing he did correct Peter on that doesn't have to do with talkling is the sound you make when you get stabbed and I think this was due to Christopher Lee's experience from World War II and the British secret service The Return of the King actually won 11 Academy Awards tying with Titanic and benhur for the most Oscars won by a single film it was also the first fantasy film to win the Oscar for Best Picture did you know that Orlando Bloom was cast

just 2 days after graduating from drama school but he did actually initially audition for the role of faramir but was instead offered the role of Legas which I think in the end was probably the right call as I can't see anyone else doing a better job portraying everyone's favorite El there were a lot of injuries when they were filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Vigo Morton s was on the receiving end of many of those did you know that he actually chipped off half his tooth when he took a sword to the face

at Helm steep when the incident happened he just asked for some glue to put the piece back in and keep on rolling but they did of course get him some proper dental work as soon as possible so that they could keep on filming the next day but while we're talking about Aragon did you know that he was almost played by Irish actor Stuart Town said but Stuart was actually fired the day before principal photography started as Peter Jackson thought he was too young and wanted someone older to play Aragon but Vigo mortensson wasn't the only

actor considered for the role after Stuart's departure but another name that Peter Jackson considered was actually Nicholas Cage and boy am I glad that they went for vgo Morton C instead have you ever noticed that Sauron is wielding a bloody dagger in the prologue you can see it briefly in the background here and a lot of people have asked what's that dagger about but that's actually a leftover from the forging of the Ring scene that was completely cut even from the extended version in this scene saon would stab his own hand and then the molten

gold in his hand would Forge together with the blood into the One Ring which is why you would then see him stand there with the bloody dagger in his hand but all of those shots of sarum for in the ring were eventually cut leaving only this quick glimpse of Saum with the dagger one example of how much effort they actually put into the Lord of the Rings trilogy is that Peter Jackson wanted hobbiton to look like a lived in Village not just something they built in a week so he actually built the entire set more

than a year before the film began and all the gardens were planted and tended buildings were weathered to create an authentic appearance so all of that happened naturally during this one year instead of them trying to fake that a couple couple of weeks before the filming which shows how much planning this Trilogy actually took Elijah Wood was actually one out of hundreds of actors who auditioned for the role of Frodo but he was so dedicated that he famously sent in an audition tape of himself dressed in full costume running through the woods to show his

dedication and whether or not this was what got him the role in the end I think Peter Jackson did the right call when he picked Elijah did you ever notice that part of the nas school's riding gear has the eye of Sauron clearly thei that in it the most prominent example of this is when the nasol are hunting Arwin and you can see that the eye of Sauron is kind of hanging in front of the horses as part of their gear a very nice little detail that is easy to glance over if you don't look

carefully big Morton s became so attached to his horse in The Lord of the Rings films that he actually decided to buy it when the filming ended he also bought Arn's horse and gave it as a gift to live Tyler's stun tble as she could not afford to buy it herself yet again showing what a stand up guy vgo is the iconic sound of the battle rog's Roar in The Fellowship of the Ring was created by layering the sounds of a cinder block being dragged across wooden boards and a tiger's growl so if you listen

carefully to this kind of quiet Roar that the batt Rog has you can actually kind of understand where the cinder block comes in because you can pretty clearly hear that even though I would never have specifically guessed that unless I heard it from the behind the scenes material sha Bean who played Boromir actually had a fear of flying in helicopters so when the crew filmed in remote locations such as up in the mountains he would actually hike up there in full costume hours ahead of the rest of the crew just so that he did not

have to fly in a helicopter talk about dedication and also maybe a little bit of inconvenience I'm not sure if they actually got him into a helicopter at some point because that sounds incredibly time consuming but whenever he had the chance he would rather hike up there for hours than take a quick helicopter flight Elijah Wood had some of the most hectic filming schedule of all the actors which meant that he often fell asleep on the set and according to the other actors he could fall asleep almost anywhere no matter how uncomfortable it was and

you might also have seen this clip of Ian McKellen falling asleep on the set of the hobby too so it was not unheard of of actors being exhausted on the set of the movies speaking of sleep we've got a word from today's sponsor man sleep now if only Ian and Elijah had these on the set during the long days of filming because man sleep makes some of the best sleep masks and accessories you'll find perfect for grabbing a quick power nap or getting a full night of quality sleep let me tell you after spending an

entire night partying with the dwarfs in Bag End we go bagging go all I wanted to do was get home rest and take a nap and that's when Mana sleep came to the rescue I put on her sound mask and instantly blocked out all the light I even threw on some sweet Lord of the Rings music and there are tons of great playlist of Spotify I can recommend and here's the cool part mantis sleep are big fans of Middle Earth 2o so if you want to try out any of their amazing products they're offering 10%

off if you speak friend and enter that's 10% off your entire order with the code melon thanks again to man asly for sponsoring the video don't forget to check them out using the link in the description did you know that the blood curdling shriek of the nasol was actually created by using the voice of Ryan Walsh Peter Jackson's wife and creative partner her manipulated scream gave the nasu their otherworldly terrifying sound and I think the behind the scenes clip talking about this was quite interesting as they thought that the initial sound that nasu made just

wasn't scary enough and then when they had an idea for how it was actually going to sound Peter said well FR can scream like that so they let her do the scream did you know that thanks to the popularity of the Lord wood Rings trilogy the annual tourist influx to New Zealand actually grew 40% from 1.7 million in 200000 to 2.4 million in 2006 and this has at least in large part been attributed to the Lord of the Rings with 6% of all International visitors in New Zealand actually saying that the films were the reason

for them travel to the country did you know that the actor Jed broy played multiple roles in The Lord of the Rings trilogy including a nasul a Rowan Rider and multiple Orcs such as sharu snaga and the unnamed inspection orc from the extended edition Jed then returned to play Nori in The Hobbit trilogy as well as even an Orc in rings of power which means that I think he's one of the few actors who has played a role in all three of the projects something that was a little bit of an urban myth but that

Andy Circus confirmed in a podcast a couple of years ago is that Golem's voice was actually inspired by the sound his cat made when cuffing up hairballs when he was trying to find Golem's unique movements and sounds he was sitting at home and struggling a little bit on how he was going to do this but then his cat appeared out of nowhere coughing out pars and he thought perfect that fits straight into Golem's personality did you ever notice that the Uruk Army has different details depending on their role in the Army such as the Berserker

helmet having a captain's Quest and then them actually pouring blood into the helmet before they put it on in order to go in a Berserker rage that's why you can see they were often bloody around the neck or The Swordsman who had headbutting spikes that was actually supposed to be used to shove into the enemy's eyes when headbutting or the sapper helmets warned by the bomb carriers having these big protective metal Shields around the helm in order to protect them from Falling Rocks or arrows Ian Holm who played Bilbo was actually the second oldest member

of the cast at 68 years old with Christoph Lee of course being the oldest at 77 but did you know that Ian actually played the role of Frodo in a radio show in 1981 Peter Jackson heard his performance as Frodo and wanted to get him to play Bilbo in the movies the studio actually suggested Anthony Hopkins for the role but Peter was adamant that he really wanted Ian Holm to play the role which I think he did a really good job with the majority of the Rowan Riders were actually women simply because they couldn't find

enough men who were used to ride horses so some of the Riders you'll see in the movie are actually women with glued on beard if you look really carefully you can see that some of them have a little bit of feminine faces one scene that has always been a little bit confusing to viewers is when Worm tongue looks out over the huge sea of urai that are ready to go into battle a single tear actually rolled down his cheek here and it's always been discussed was this because he had regrets did he think he was

beautiful or what was the reasoning behind this tiar but this tier was apparently not in the script originally but Peter Jackson found out that Brad dor who played Worm tongue was able to cry on command and in the end he decided to keep that in the movie even though it wasn't in the script something very wholesome is that the nine actors who played the members of the fellowship actually all got matching Elish tattoos symbolizing the number nine all of them except for John Reese Davis who played gimle who instead had his stunt double get the

tattoo in this classic scene with Boromir when he kind of looks down a little bit on his knee when reading his iconic lines One does not simply walk into Mordor there's actually a reason for this because the lines for Boromir weren't written until the night before and he got them the same morning which meant that he did not have time to practice so instead he taped the script to his knee and read them straight off the paper during the shot and that's why you see him looking down like that not because he was told to

but because it was a way for him to conceal that he was actually reading the script of a paper very clever but you will notice it the next time you watch the movie the scene when Pippin asks about second breakfast and gets apples thrown at him was actually Vigo Morton standing off screen throwing apples at him and this scene apparently took 16 attempts to get right and Billy Boyd said the following about scene he was standing behind the camera throwing the apples and well I've never seen him so happy and I bet he throw some

bad shots too to make sure that they had to do a couple of extra takes if you look very carefully at the scene in the gray Havens at the end of the Return of the King you will see that Sam's vest actually disappears as he was wearing a yellow vest with several buttons but in the last two shots of Sam he is only in the white shirt that was underneath and then the vest is back in a final scene when Sam returns home the reason for this is actually that Sean ason accidentally took off this

vest during the lunch break the day they were filming and then they kept on filming the entire day and Peter Jackson noticed that something was wrong they did actually have an entire day of retakes but then they had another mishap where all the footage that day was done blurry and then they had a third re-shoot where Sam did actually wear the correct outfit but in the end some of those shots from the original day was still the best so they decided to keep them in there even though the vest is actually missing a lot of

the scale difference in the lord of rings was portrayed either by using small scale doubles playing smaller versions of the hobbits or dwarfs or by using clever camera angles however to create the sense of urai carrying Mar and Pippen being a lot larger they instead made oversized Uruk costumes that stunt men could wear and the actors would then act against it looks really ridiculous when you see it from these angles as it's basically only the chest Head and Shoulders that are really big but it obviously portrayed the size difference perfectly and ended up great in

the movie did you know that the area in New Zealand where they filmed the scenes for the black gate was actually an active training ground for the New Zealand military which meant that they had to be extra careful and be instruct of where exactly they could be and couldn't be due to potential grenades or mines in the area they had to be briefed pretty much every day by the military to make sure that everyone was safe and no accidents happened did you know that tree Beard's booming voice was actually performed by John re Davis who

played gimly using a modified version of his natural voice so in the scenes where Mary and Pippin were acting against tree beard John Ru Davis was sitting outside the camera angles and giving them the lines to act against while they were often stuck in the this huge animatronic that played the physical version of tree Beard's being this background elf that can be seen quickly at the Council of Alon and that then reappears in the Return of the King and says the following to Arwin lady Arwin we cannot delay my lady became a big fan favorite

and got the name figwit and because of his popularity in the community Peter Jackson then brought the actor Brett McKenzie back to play the elf Linder with actual lines in The Hobbit trilogy Brett did think that lindair was a different elf than the one he played in The Lord of the Rings but I think it's really cool that someone who is just a very brief background character in The Lord of the Rings trilogy got a little bit more screen time in The Hobbit did you know that the shot after souran falls down and dies where

this wheel actually goes under water was not done with a doll but with an actual stuntman going under the water until the shot was completed this was obviously a bit dangerous and he had to hold his breath so divers were nearby as a safety measure some of them hiding under floating props such as this upside down basket very clever but I still don't understand why they didn't just use a doll for this as that sounds a lot easier since saan was completely dead did you know that the scene where Pippen gets thrown out of the

room by denior was actually shot with two actors during the same take with no CGI Pippin's scale double fwn played pipping during the first part to show the scale difference between him and denior but then when pH gets thrown by denior and rolls towards the camera Billy Boyd hid out of frame and popped up the moment Fone rolled into his b so you can actually see two actors play Pippen in the same shot with no cuts and no CGI a very clever camera trick that turned out really well the scene where Theo then gets cured

by Gandalf was done without any CGI at all first of all Bernard Hill did not like Prosthetics as he found them to limit the actor a lot so in order to create the old and poison theat they used an old makeup technique called old age stipple which was a practical effect to make him look as bad as he did and then in order to create the transformation effect Bernard Hill watched a replay of himself and had to match the movements exactly so that the two clips could basically fade into each other and create the effect

of theodan being healed another example of great practical effects and acting that they used instead of just SI eying his face to look better like many modern movies do you know that roid Pan's grandson actually plays one of the Rangers in OS skilia in Return of the King roid also appears in a deleted scene in The Hobbit and The desolation of smog as one of the humans throwing the morgal blades into the graves so I think it's really cool that the Tolkien family to some degree was directly involved in both of the trilogies while we're

talking about cameos did you know that sha astin's daughter actually played Sam and Rose's daughter in Return of the King and Sarah mle's daughter actually played Sam and Rose's son so very fitting that Shawn and Sarah's real children actually play Sam and Rose's children too something that you will probably never unsee is in the scene when Aragon gimy and Legas meet the reim you can actually see eomer's sword fall out of the Scabbard when he mounts his horse just look carefully during these frames it looks so stupid once you've seen it but before someone pointed

this out to me I never noticed it and they decided to keep this particular take anyways because it turned out really good otherwise the battering ram that they used in HS deep was actually a full weight battering ram which required a lot of people to carry to counter this the art Department built a really sturdy door for them to bash the ram into but they actually wanted the urai stuntman to break down the door for real to make it look as realistic as possible but it turned out that the door they built was way too

strong and it wouldn't even budge the slightest from the battering ram no matter how hard they rammed it into the door so they actually had to manually tear down parts of the door for the filming to create the effects we see in the movie did you know that Brad dorf who played GMA Worm tongue actually had to wear a full out prosthetic in his face that gave him a brand new nose veins and things like that I never really thought that because he still looks pretty human I just figured they put on some pale makeup

and painted on some veins but no he was wearing a full prosthetic and for this he also had to shave off his eyebrows completely for the role something which his girlfriend apparently wasn't very happy about did you know that the destruction of badur was deliberately designed to not invoke any comparisons to 9/11 going so far as to have the tower being destroyed by a magical shock wave from the middle of the tower instead of from the top down probably a smart move considering how closely after the events of 9/11 that the Return of the King

actually came out one long-standing myth is that Ian McKellen accidentally hit his head on the beam in bag end but Ian actually recalls the event differently this myth was actually the arrived from the DVD commentary in which Peter Jackson reflects on the happy accident that made the Final Cut but Ian later stated that he actually came up with this idea the night before and Jackson merily thought it was an accident and according to Ian that was just great acting apparently early on in the development process before the trilogy ended up at new line Cinema it

was supposed to be made at Miramax and Peter Jackson recall that Bob Weinstein really thought that one of the four main Hobbits should die well we can't have all of them surviving he said we've got to kill a hobbit I don't care which one you can pick I'm not telling you who it should be you pick out who you want to kill but we really got to kill one of those Hobbits and Peter said that in that situation you kind of just nod and smile and say yeah that's something we can consider even though he

knew that no they're not going to kill off one of the hobbits and completely contradict what happens in the books and finally a fact that I'm sure many of you have not heard before in this scene when Aragon is supposed to kick the helmet vgo Mortenson actually broke his but that brings this video to an end we're really curious to hear how many of these 50 facts did you guys know before watching the video write your final score in the comments below and we really hope you learned something new and interesting from this video that

you will think about the next time you watch the trilogy or discuss it with your friends if you enjoyed the video we would really appreciate if you Dro a like below and hit that subscribe button too and consider checking out our merch store if you want to support us even more thank you very much for watching and as always May the Orcs be with you you