Trivia / Soylent Green

• And Starring: Edward G. Robinson. The "Furniture Girls" that briefly appear in the party Shirl throws also get this treatment in the Addtional Cast section of the credits.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: An unusual instance. While Charlton Heston does actually yell "Soylent Green is people!" during the film's climax, most people get the context wrong and believe that he screams it while running down the street and fleeing from the police. In actual fact he says it to the police, in the middle of a cathedral that has been converted into a homeless shelter, while being carried away on a stretcher. The "running down the street" scenario was actually from a Saturday Night Live parody of the film. They may also be getting it confused with the ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
• California Doubling: Set in New York City, filmed in California.
• Completely Different Title: The film is known by several different titles in various countries:
  • Spanish-speaking territories: Cuando el destino nos alcance ("When fate reaches us")
  • Brazil: No Mundo de 2020 ("In the world of 2020")
  • Denmark: Fremtidens rædsel ("The horror of the future")
  • Finland: Maailma vuonna 2022 ("The world in 2022")
  • Germany: ...Jahr 2022... die überleben wollen... ("... year 2022... who want to survive...")
  • Greece: Νέα Υόρκη, έτος 2022 μ.Χ. ("New York, year 2022 AD")
  • Italy: 2022: i sopravvissuti ("2022: the survivors")
  • Portugal: À Beira do Fim ("On the brink of the end")
• Defictionalization: There really is a Soylent company that makes meal replacement drinks, and you can actually find Soylent Green crackers out there, though it's not really made of people. (Or so we hope...)
• Disowned Adaptation: Sort of. Harry Harrison, who authored the novel (Make Room! Make Room!) that the film was based on, had nothing to do with the adaptation and later declared himself "50 percent" pleased with how it turned out.
• Enforced Method Acting: Charlton Heston during Sol's "going home". Edward G. Robinson had privately told Heston that he was actually dying of cancer. This was Robinson's last film; he died twelve days after it was made.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Norway: Soylent Green - USA år 2022 ("USA in 2022")
  • Sweden: Soylent green - Amerika år 2022 ("America in 2022")
• Life Imitates Art: There is a real-life meal replacement drink called "Soylent". Canada banned the beverage in September 2017 due to its extreme fat content; cue Twitter erupting with allegations that it's because Soylent is made of people.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Edward G. Robinson was really dying from cancer during filming, passing away just a few days after filming Sol's death scene. Thorn's tears are Charlton Heston's real tears during the assisted suicide scene as he and Robinson had become very close and Heston was one of the few to be aware.
  • The pretty women basically reduced to slavery is based on the fact that declining societies usually treat women like crap.
• Swan Song: Edward G. Robinson was dying from cancer as he made the film. His character has an extended death scene in the film, and it was the last scene that Robinson shot; he passed on just a few days later.
• Technology Marches On:
  • Shirl is shown playing an early-'70s arcade machine – Computer Space, a video game with clearly very old vector-style graphics, and the first commercially sold all-electronic arcade game ever – as opposed to the high-resolution and/or photorealistic games that have existed since the mid-2000s. Apparently, the filmmakers never thought video games would advance any more than that.
  • The film is set in 2022, and yet Thorn is forced to rely on police call boxes, as opposed to a radio or a cellphone. Hell, nowadays Thorn's boss would likely have some kind of computer on his desk.
  • In the 1970s, the writers believed, as did many people, that declining food production and high birthrates would lead to a population crisis. Nowadays GMOs and better birth control have led to more food being produced and lower birthrates than in the 1970s.
• Throw It In!: The dinner scene was not originally in the script, but was ad-libbed by Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson at the director's request.

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