History Trivia / Tenet

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly (or recklessly, some believed) released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in America (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in America and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in America in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in America starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks and possibly caused Nolan to part ways with Creator/WarnerBros, making his next film, ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', at Creator/{{Universal}} instead.

* DoingItForTheArt:
** As perhaps the staunchest advocate of the theatrical experience, Nolan was adamant about releasing the film in 2020 in theaters and nowhere else, even amidst the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic as [[ChannelHop/COVID19PandemicRelatedExamples many other studios chose to release their smaller 2020 films on streaming platforms]] and either pushed their tentpoles to 2021 to avoid financial losses or released them on premium video on demand.
** The inverted fight scenes were achieved with minimal special effects. Creator/JohnDavidWashington trained extensively alongside the stunt team to prepare and figure out how to fight in ''reverse'' so that the inverted party in each sequence would be seen pulling back their hits.
** Nolan insisted on shooting on film with IMAX cameras. In shots with inverted causality, turning the footage backwards would have been trivial if it had been shot on digital, but shooting on film forwards and then reprinting the footage to run backwards would have lowered the image quality, so Nolan re-engineered the IMAX cameras so that they could feed film backwards.

* CreatorChosenCasting: Creator/ChristopherNolan cast Creator/JohnDavidWashington after seeing him in ''Film/BlacKkKlansman''.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in America (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in America and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in America in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in America starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks and possibly caused Nolan to part ways with Creator/WarnerBros, making his next film, ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', at Creator/{{Universal}} instead.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks and possibly caused Nolan to part ways with Creator/WarnerBros, making his next film, ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', at Creator/{{Universal}} instead.

* NamesTheSame: There is a bicycle component manufacturer named [[https://ridetenet.com/ Tenet]] that has a logo very similar to the one used in the film's initial advertising push. When Creator/ChristopherNolan learned about this, he [[https://ridetenet.com/pages/a-letter-from-nolan reached out]] and offered to change the film's logo to minimize confusion.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks and possibly caused Nolan to part ways with Creator/WarnerBros, making his next film, ''Film/{{Oppenheimer}}'', at Creator/{{Universal}} instead.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks and possibly caused Nolan to part ways with Creator/WarnerBros, making his next film (about UsefulNotes/RobertOppenheimer) at Creator/{{Universal}} instead.

* ActorAllusion: One of the recurring phrases of the film is "we live in a twilight world". Robert Pattinson is one of the film's leads. A few have even jokingly speculated Nolan included it to tease him given Pattinson's notorious dislike of the franchise.
* AwesomeDearBoy: Christopher Nolan was debating how to do the plane crash he'd scripted[[note]]he was weighing if it should be done at scale with a model of a larger plane or at full scale but using a smaller plane[[/note]] when he learned that the production could source an old Boeing 747 at a relatively reasonable cost[[note]]not only was the plane relatively cheap, they made back a good chunk of the cost by selling the engines[[/note]]. He didn't hesitate to say yes.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks.

* VoiceOnlyCameo: The heavy breathing in the film score, meant to stand for [[BigBad Sator]], is director Nolan's own breathing.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 amidst the worst timeframes of UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 during what were possibly the worst days of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks.

* BoxOfficeBomb: The movie grossed $363 million worldwide in total, on a budget north of $200 million. It was valiantly released in September 2020 during possibly the worst days of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic (some commentators entrusted it and Nolan with the lofty goal of "saving cinemas"), which has wrecked the theatrical business stateside in the USA (only 65% of theaters operated at the time of its release, with severe limitations on the number of seats per screening) and has discouraged many usual moviegoing audiences to go back to theaters in the USA and Europe in general in-between several consecutive lockdowns. The film even grossed more in China (on par with ''Inception'', on a market that has mostly recovered from the pandemic) than in the USA in the end. The film's financial struggles are believed to have inspired Creator/WarnerMedia' decision to release the remainder of the 2020/2021 Creator/WarnerBros slate simultaneously on Creator/HBOMax alongside theaters in the USA starting with ''Film/WonderWoman1984'', a move that has angered Nolan and a number of other film industry folks.