Trivia / The Imitation Game

• Ability over Appearance: Benedict Cumberbatch looks nothing like Alan Turing, but he still delivers a convincing performance.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Latin America: The Enigma Code
  • Bulgaria: Game of Codes
  • Poland: A Game of Mysteries
  • Catalonia: Deciphering the Enigma
  • Turkey: Enigma
• Dear Negative Reader: Screenwriter Graham Moore responded to complaints from the real Commander Denniston's family (see below) by saying that the film just portrayed the “natural conflict of people working extremely hard under unimaginable pressure”.
• Disowned Adaptation:
  • Andrew Hodges, who wrote a biography of Alan Turing that the film was based on, said he was "alarmed by the inaccuracies", especially an overplaying of Alan's relationship with Joan Clarke. He also called the fictional subplot with Soviet spy John Cairncross "ludicrous".
  • Judith Finch, granddaughter of the real Commander Alistair Denniston, was so offended by the man's Historical Villain Upgrade, she and more of his family wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph - describing it as "an unwarranted sideswipe".
• Dueling Movies: With The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking. Incidentally, Cumberbatch had previously played Hawking in the BBC television film Hawking in 2004.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Benedict Cumberbatch wore dentures that were replicas of the real Alan Turing's.
• Fake Scot: Irish actor Allen Leech plays John Cairncross, who was a native of Lanark in central Scotland.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Germany: The Imitation Game: A Top Secret Life
  • Japan: The Imitation Game: The Secret of Enigma and the Genius Mathematician
  • Spain: The Imitation Game (Deciphering Enigma)
• Method Acting: Cumberbatch confessed that in one of the final scenes of the film he couldn't stop crying and had a breakdown. It was, as he said, "being an actor or a person that had grown incredibly fond of the character and thinking what he had suffered and how that had affected him."
• Real-Life Relative: Benedict Cumberbatch and Allen Leech are actually cousins, albeit only distantly.
• Reality Subtext:
  • While receiving his Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Graham Moore revealed in his acceptance speech that he had attempted suicide as a teenager over feeling "different."
  • Keira Knightley and Benedict Cumberbatch are close friends in real life, adding another layer to Alan and Joan's friendship in the film.
• Typecasting:
  • Benedict Cumberbatch as the Insufferable Genius.
  • Keira Knightley as the Spirited Young Lady ahead of her time.
  • Charles Dance as the imposing authority figure.
  • Mark Strong as the creepy morally ambiguous presence.
  • Allen Leech being revealed as a Soviet Spy makes him rather similar to his character Tom Branson in Downton Abbey, who's an outspoken supporter of communism (although it's set three decades earlier).
• What Could Have Been: Early in development, Leonardo DiCaprio was attached to play Alan Turing! Ron Howard and David Yates were likewise attached to direct at different points before Morten Tyldum took the reins.

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