Line #15 Trivia/Contact


1	!!The novel:
2	* HeAlsoDid: Creator/CarlSagan, astronomer and famous for the scientific documentary ''Series/CosmosAPersonalVoyage'', as well as essays and books of scientific and skeptical nature, writing a novel might sound alien for some. Indeed, it's possible to notice common points in this book which are later repeated (or are repeated from) his other works.
3	* ReferencedBy: ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'': The Contact victory is stated by developers to be inspired by a Carl Sagan novel of the same name.
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5	!!The film:
6	* CaliforniaDoubling: Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland doubles for Japan.
7	* DyeingForYourArt: Creator/JodieFoster has a massive bump on her head in the scene when Ellie and Kent first meet. That was from filming a scene when she gets in and out of a harrier jet, and she bumped her head three times.
8	* InMemoriam: "For Carl" before the closing credits. Creator/CarlSagan, who wrote the novel and screenplay, passed away in December 1996, before the movie was released.
9	* PlayingAgainstType: David Morse as a character who isn't a hardass or a villain, but a loving father.
10	* RealLifeRelative: The Japanese home release had father-son seiyuu duo Creator/ChikaoOhtsuka and Creator/AkioOtsuka dubbing Hadden and Kitz.
11	* ScienceMarchesOn:
12	** It is now thought that radio and TV signals are not capable of being detected much farther than a single light-year from Earth before they fade into nothingness, meaning the whole plot of AliensStealCable is impossible.
13	** Sagan actually mentions this in the "Author's Note" section.
14	--->My fondest hope for this book is that it will be made obsolete by the pace of real scientific discovery.
15	* ScullyBox: In her DVD commentary, Creator/JodieFoster admits she is standing on a box when Ellie and Palmer kiss, as she is nine inches shorter than Creator/MatthewMcConaughey.
16	* TechnologyMarchesOn:
17	** At one point Ellie channel-surfs and finds a station offering onetime access to [[{{MMORPG}} a downloadable fantasy RPG game]]; if you liked it, you could order the full game ''on a floppy disk''.
18	** While leaving a museum with Palmer Joss, Ellie receives a message on her ''beeper''. She has to get back to her office because she can't find a ''pay phone.''
19	** The way space tech and travel is depicted didn't exactly play out in the real 1999.
20	** Averted in the last chapter, though. The Argus supercomputers calculated pi to 10^21 base-11 digits, whereas the real-world record stands at 100 trillion digits as of 2022.
21	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: An earlier draft of the script portrays, in detail, a radio-signal relay station in orbit around Vega as it beams the first TV broadcast from Earth to the listening aliens far across space. The surface of their homeworld would have been seen in a flyover shot.
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24	!!The pinball game:
25	* FollowTheLeader: The success of ''Contact'' prompted many copycats by other manufacturers, and fostered the rapid use of solenoids, bells, and tilt.
26	* ThrowItIn: The use of a bell started as a practical joke at Pacific Amusement. One of the employees wired a doorbell buzzer to the Contact Switch on a demo table, and every time it was hit, owner Fred [=McClellan=] thought his phone was ringing and tried to answer it. When the bell proved to be an attention-getting device, it was added to all subsequent machines.
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29	!!The DS game:
30	* ScienceMarchesOn: The GreenRocks are supposedly made of element 117. Inevitably, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessine the real element 117]] was synthesized and recognized by IUPAC in the next decade or so, and naturally it has none of the properties displayed in the game.
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Context Trivia / Contact