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  • Ability over Appearance: Tanner Bolt was originally written as an Alec Baldwin-type. Tyler Perry was cast.
  • Approval of God: Nancy Grace found the film's parody of her "hilarious", considering it to be her new favorite parody of herself.
  • Defictionalization: The Blu-ray comes with an Amazing Amy book ("Amazing Amy The Tattle Tale"). It's every bit as creepy in its over-the-top portrayal of Amazing Amy as the real Amy claims it was.
  • Dawson Casting: Ben Affleck is actually nine years older than Carrie Coon, despite playing twins. He was actually concerned about the age difference, and decided that the twins should be thirty years old, to make it more believable.
  • Doing It for the Art: Ben Affleck postponed directing Live by Night in order to work with David Fincher, even stating, "He's the only director I've met who can do everybody else's job better than they could." On-set one day, Affleck changed the lens setting on a camera an almost indiscernible amount, betting a crew member that Fincher wouldn't notice. Affleck lost the bet as Fincher brought up, "Why does the camera look a little dim?"
  • Dyeing for Your Art:
    • Rosamund Pike gained and lost thirteen pounds three times to play the character at different times in her life. She stuffed herself with hamburgers and malts to gain the weight, and exercised with a professional boxer for as long as four hours a day and ran five miles (in forty-two minutes) to lose the weight.
    • Kim Dickens, normally blonde, became a brunette to play Detective Boney.
  • Fake American: Englishwoman Rosamund Pike plays Amy, a full-blooded American. And she pulls off quite a convincing American accent, which is one of the reasons she is lauded for her performance.
  • Inspiration for the Work: The author said she was inspired to write the story after hearing about the Laci Peterson case, where the handsome, seemingly perfect husband of a heavily pregnant woman was shown to be curiously unfeeling and calm regarding the disappearance of his wife. Turns out he was having an affair, too, and attempted to continue the affair all throughout the search efforts. The difference is that the husband was eventually convicted of murdering his innocent wife, while Amy was actually the mastermind behind her disappearance.
  • Life Imitates Art: A particularly bizarre crime case that took place in Vallejo, California, in 2015 was dubbed the "real life Gone Girl" when a woman named Denise Huskins was accused of faking her own kidnapping to punish her boyfriend Aaron Quinn for still having feelings for his ex after he himself was accused of murdering her... until it turned out she really was kidnapped by a Serial Rapist and the movie itself got scrutiny for possibly contributing to the police officers' biased conclusions. The case later got the true crime documentary treatment in 2024 with Netflix's American Nightmare.
  • Lying Creator: Fincher and Flynn claimed that the film would feature a reworked third act. The film's third act, up to and including its ending, is almost entirely faithful to the book.
  • Playing Against Type: A dark thriller featuring several actors better known for their comedic work, including Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry and Casey Wilson (although the latter two play somewhat comedic characters).
    • Kim Dickens, who has played very sexual characters and has shown nudity before, plays the stern and conservative Detective Rhonda Boney.
    • Rosamund Pike is best known for playing heroic leads, here, she plays the sociopathic Amy.
  • Star-Making Role/Career Resurrection: Rosamund Pike has been in many notable movies beforehand but hasn't truly been in the spotlight since Die Another Day. This, however, gave her a really big boost and an Oscar nomination.
  • Throw It In!: Rosamund Pike said in a magazine article about making the movie that she including some levity during a scene where she's making pancakes that wasn't in the script, in order to convey a light-hearted friendliness to Ben Affleck. Pike said that the nature of Nick and Amy's relationship didn't allow or call for much (if any) playfulness, but she wanted to add it because it could play as either genuine and showing some basic affection between Nick and Amy, or it could be another part of Amy's warped psychology relative to everything else she says and does in the film.
  • Wag the Director: Originally, Nick was supposed to wear a Yankees cap in one scene. But Ben Affleck, a die-hard Red Sox fan, refused to wear it. Ultimately, he and David Fincher compromised, and he wears a Mets cap.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Jon Hamm was seriously considered for Nick Dunne, but his schedule on Mad Men didn't allow this. Brad Pitt, Ryan Reynolds and Seth Rogen were also considered.
    • Reese Witherspoon had originally intended to play Amy, but scheduling conflicts meant Rosamund Pike took the role (Witherspoon remained on board as one of the producers). Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Abbie Cornish, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron and Olivia Wilde were also considered.
    • Flynn's original drafts of the novel contained a few differences, some of which would have given the story an entirely different context and tone, such as:
      • The story was originally set about seven years earlier, with Nick and Amy meeting in 1998, thus removing the economic and recession plot entirely from their story.
      • Amy's background and her parents' was almost completely different, which oddly makes both of them more sympathetic. Rather than being psychologists-turned-children's authors, the Elliots were once a corporate mediator-turned-CEO (Rand) and a professional feminist activist and author (Marybeth) who later became bestselling authors who wrote a book about creating an emotionally "whole" child. Amy became the way she was not because she was terribly spoiled but because her parents, who were well-intentioned, constantly overanalyzed her and she learned to mimic behaviours she knew would please them. Most curiously, the biggest change is that Amy is herself from the Midwest, raised in Chicago and not New York City.
  • Working Title: Psycho Bitch.

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