History Fridge / Titanic1997

* The WMG page pointed out that Old Rose boarded the ''Keldysh'' with pictures of herself, which does seem self-absorbed. However, the pictures are lit in the same golden, dreamlike lighting of the Heaven!Titanic scenes. She might have brought the physical pictures along in remembrance of the fact that she made sure the efforts to save her weren’t in vain (Andrews giving her his life jacket and Joughin catching her, for example), and fulfilled all of her promises to Jack. Alternatively, the pictures aren’t real: just a handy visual rundown of Rose’s life post-Titanic (not unlike a clip show montage), flashing before her eyes in a dream and/or before she dies.

** While Jack may have bought his ticket ''to'' Europe, there's no telling when he left the US or how long he was in Europe, and he's not likely the type -personal or financial- to stay at hotels that kept precise records. Nevermind if any of those records even survived by the time the ''Titanic'' was found again.

** She could have remarried. A lot of widows from the Titanic did. She was still a name and could therefore be a somewhat attractive prospect for an older bachelor.

* For animal lovers: Those dogs we saw the stewards walking earlier are NOT on the lifeboats. Which means . . .

** Cameron portrayed two "Titanic dog sinking stories" in the script: When the bridge begins to sink, the whole pack of dogs seen by Jack and co. days earlier can be seen running among the people, as they were during the sinking (it is unknown who left them out of their cages, though this is usually attributed to J.J.Astor, whose wife trusted him to look after her dog after boarding a lifeboat); and when Jack and Rose are in the water, the see they French bulldog swimming past them (he was seen from a lifeboat). However, it was decided that these scenes were too much MoodWhiplash and were cut.

* Cal obviously had the potential to be an abusive husband; his behavior towards Rose was unpleasant in general, he scared her, threatened her and on one occasion, slapped her hard across the face. We know that after Rose escaped from him, he went on to marry another woman. What's the likelihood he treated ''her'' decently?
** Admittedly, most of Cal's behavior was due to him being--understandably--upset and humiliated that his fiancée was cheating on him. Even her dancing with Jack at the third class party was [[ValuesDissonance tantamount to adultery for a first class lady in 1912.]] His actual wife may have been dutiful, obedient, and utterly devoted to him for all we know. Not to mention the fact that it's also possible Cal had a HeelFaceTurn after the tragedy and losing Rose. It might have occurred to him with reflection that he basically drove Rose into the arms of another man with his behavior.

* After Cal flips the table and screams at Rose, Trudy rushes in to clean up. Rose babbles hysterically until Trudy quietly tells her, "It's all right", in a tone of voice that strongly implies that this isn't the first time she's dealt with something like this--either she herself has been abused or she's witnessed plenty of other wealthy men assaulting their wives/girlfriends.
* Rose narrates early on that she considered the ''Titanic'' "a slave ship", and her personal life after the disaster seems to have been freer and happier. It at least appears to be so. If Rose is not a completely selfish jerkass, she would also have to be a ShellShockedVeteran for the rest of her life, free, but knowing that her life was made possible by the expense of all those casualties left behind in the North Atlantic. No wonder she has been silent for 84 years. It is also no wonder that her DyingDream is filled with all the people she left behind - who presumably showed up to forgive her (as the whole shebang initially never was her fault to begin with).

** If we take Option A and the ending is really Rose dying and going to heaven and that's really their afterlife... well, look around. There's all the people we saw die. Including all the third-class passengers we got to meet, Rose's maid, the orchestra, the stewards manning the doors, Captain Smith, First Officer Murdoch, Thomas Andrews... so, if this is their afterlife, sucks to be them. Smith, Murdoch, Andrews, Guggenheim, and at least one of the orchestra were all married with families that weren't on the ''Titanic''. Chief Officer Wilde (aka dead guy with the whistle) was a widower whose wife was already dead before the sinking; Astor's wife and unborn child lived long lives without him, not to mention that he had two grown children from a previous marriage, yet here he is; the Strausses may have died together, but they had adult children; and what about Fabrizio's beloved mother?

* When Rose says goodbye to her mother, Cal runs after her. Had he stayed at the lifeboat, Officer Lightoller would’ve asked someone to help row the lifeboat(as he did in real life). Cal was experienced with rowing(as seen in a deleted scene) and much younger then Arthur Peuchen(who we see sitting next to Molly). Had he not been so obsessed with Rose, he could've easily saved both his life and reputation by climbing into boat 6 and helping the crew row.

* Remember the steward who drops the keys and fails to save Jack and Rose? Imagine what he was thinking after he selfishly ran up the stairs. Their screams probably haunted him for the rest of his life, especially if he survived.

* The Irish mother is last seen tucking in her children after realizing they're not going to survive. The accommodations for third class women and families were located in the stern. There's a possibility they may have still been alive after the breakup and died once the stern imploded beneath the surface, half a minute at most.

* The Irish mother is last seen tucking in her children after realizing they're not going to survive. The accommodations for women and families were located in the stern. There's a possibility they may have still been alive after the breakup and died once the stern imploded beneath the surface, half a minute at most.

* Near the beginning of the film we see a boot, broken spectacles, a waistcoat, and the head of one of Cora’s dolls. This can send shivers down your spine when you realise how the bodies of those who died decomposed under the ocean over the decades. To make it more horrifying, the bodies may not have decomposed at all but simply eaten by sharks and other fish.

* Near the beginning of the film we see a boot, broken spectacles, a waistcoat, and the head of one of Cora’s dolls. This can send shivers down your spine when you realise how the bodies of those who died decomposed under the ocean over the decades. To make it more horrifying, the bodies may not have decomposed at all but simply eaten by sharks and other fish.
** At two miles down, there isn't much life to speak of, the waters of the North Atlantic in winter are too cold for most sharks,[[note]]Most northern Atlantic sharks are largely coastal.[[/note]] and scavenger action tends to displace body parts. The low temperature and oxygen at that depth drastically slows normal decomposition. The paired shoes in particular, of which Bob Ballard noted many during his initial dives to the site, were left behind as the bodies that wore them essentially dissolved. The process isn't fast compared to decomposition, but ''Titanic'' lay unseen for 73 years, and wasn't visited for another year after that. Each pair of shoes marks the final resting place of one of the lost of ''Titanic.''

** At two miles down, there isn't much life to speak of, and the waters of the North Atlantic in winter are too cold for most sharks,[[note]]Most northern Atlantic sharks are largely coastal.[[/note]] and scavenger action tends to displace body parts. The low temperature and oxygen at that depth drastically slows normal decomposition. The paired shoes in particular, of which Bob Ballard noted many during his initial dives to the site, were left behind as the bodies that wore them essentially dissolved. The process isn't fast compared to decomposition, but ''Titanic'' lay unseen for 73 years, and wasn't visited for another year after that. Each pair of shoes marks the final resting place of one of the lost of ''Titanic.''

* Near the beginning of the film we see a boot, broken spectacles, a waistcoat, and the head of one of Cora’s dolls. This can send shivers down your spine when you realise how the bodies of those who died decomposed under the ocean over the decades. To make it more horrifying, the bodies may not have decomposed at all but simply eaten by sharks and other fish.

* When Boiler Room 6 is breached during the collision, it appears that there is already water on the ground. How is there water when it hasn't been opened to the sea yet? The cargo hold. The watertight doors have not been closed yet, so water from the breached cargo hold is getting in before the boiler room suffers its own damage.

* Near the beginning of the film we see a boot, broken spectacles and a waistcoat in the ship wreck and a doll's head that was one of Clora's dolls. This can send shivers down your spine when you realise how the bodies of those who died decomposed under the ocean over the decades. To make it more horrifying the bodies may not have decomposed but instead the bodies were simply eaten by sharks and other fish that live there as part of survival.

** Admittedly, most of Cal's behavior was due to him being--understandably--upset and humiliated that his fiancèe was cheating on him. Even her dancing with Jack at the third class party was [[ValuesDissonance tantamount to adultery for a first class lady in 1912.]] His actual wife may have been dutiful, obedient, and utterly devoted to him for all we know. Not to mention the fact that it's also possible Cal had a HeelFaceTurn after the tragedy and losing Rose. It might have occurred to him with reflection that he basically drove Rose into the arms of another man with his behavior.

*** That would depend on which marriages you're talking about and how those involved are behaving. In high society, what Rose was doing would make Cal a laughingstock by association with his apparently immature, reckless fiancèe;.

* Rose narrates early on that she considered the ''Titanic'' "a slave ship", and her personal life after the disaster seems to have been freer and happier. It at least appears to be so. If Rose is not a completely selfish jerkass, she would also have to be a ShellShockedVeteran for the rest of her life, free, but knowing that her life was made possible by the expense of all those casualties left behind in the North Atlantic. No wonder she has been silent for 84 years. It is also no wonder that her DyingDream is filled with all the people she left behind - who presumably showed up to forgive her (as the whole shebang initially never was her fault to begin with).

* Rose alerts the lifeboat by prying an officer's whistle out of Chief Officer Wilde's dead hands. When Lowe's boat takes her aboard, he can't have not noticed the blue frozen corpse of his immediate superior staring him in the face and realized where she got the whistle. Bad enough to see all the relatively-anonymous corpses, looking straight at someone who until about twenty minutes ago was your coworker, boss, and if not for an order from another superior, that might have been you in the water....

** If we take Option A and the ending is really Rose dying and going to heaven and that's really their afterlife...well, look around. There's all the people we saw die. Including all the third-class passengers we got to meet, Rose's maid, the orchestra, the stewards manning the doors, Captain Smith, First Officer Murdoch, Thomas Andrews...so, if this is their afterlife, sucks to be them. Smith, Murdoch, Andrews, Guggenheim, at least one of the orchestra were all married with families that weren't on the ''Titanic'', Chief Officer Wilde (aka dead guy with the whistle) was a widower whose wife was already dead before the sinking, Astor's wife and unborn child lived long lives without him, not to mention that he had two grown children from a previous marriage, yet here he is, the Strausses may have died together, but they had adult children, what about Fabrizio's beloved mother?
*** This heaven is like a dream. When you dream, the characters in your dream, despite being real friends to you in waking life, do not have consciousness of their own Which is kinda scary in its own that all the people she sees are empty beyond the actions towards her. Maybe at least Jack can maintain inner thought. The 'real' Mr. Andrews for example probably has a different afterlife from his perspective, with friends and family of his own, back home in his own happiest time of life.

* So, what DID happen to Rose's mother? She admits to Rose she's pressuring her to marry Cal because her deadbeat dead husband left them with nothing but the family name and a pile of debt. Rose marries rich, they can pay off the creditors, if she doesn't, all their belongings are sold off and her mother's taking in sewing. Now, she might have been exaggerating, but the fact that Rose's marriage is apparently their only trump card suggests there aren't any close relatives to take them in. Old Rose mentions that she 'heard' Cal shot himself after the Crash of '29, but doesn't say anything about her mother. (You know, the previously-unknown great-grandmother of that nice granddaughter who feeds her Pomeranian and hauls her out for helicopter rides to Russian research vessel in the middle of the North Atlantic and presumably packed all those trunks? Ie, is doing Trudy's job now?) So did Ruth have to swallow her pride, hock all her belongings, and either take up seamstressing or throw herself on the charity and pity of her society friends? [[DriventoSuicide Or did she take a darker option?]]

** Cameron portrayed two "Titanic dog sinking stories" in the script: When the bridge begins to sink, the whole pack of dogs seen by Jack and co. days earlier can be seen running among the people, as they were during the sinking (it is unknown who left them out of their cages, though this is usually attributed to J.J.Astor, whose wife trusted him to look after her dog after boarding a lifeboat); and when Jack and Rose are in the water, the see they French bulldog swimming pass them (he was seen from a lifeboat). However, it was decided that these scenes were too much MoodWhiplash and were cut.

** Uh, that was the last boat away (except the one that wound up upside-down.) If Cal hadn't thrown her in there, then the only difference would have been her ENTIRE family would die (assuming that the mother and other kids weren't on another boat already and her father, who was likely dead one way or another, was left looking for her.) Though the 'looking for a lost child who was actually already gone' did cause the only first-class child fatality, Lorraine Allison, who was with her parents looking for her baby brother and his nurse (who were in a lifeboat already.)
* The idea that Jack and Fabrizio's names aren't on the lists (due to them running on board at the last minute and having tickets they hadnt purchased themselves) so Fabrizio's family will NEVER know where he is, if he is alive, or what happened to him. Him and Jack are completely lost in time!

* Cal obviously had the potential to be an abusive husband, his behavior towards Rose was unpleasant in general, he scared her, threatened her and on one occasion, slapped her hard across the face. We know that after Rose escaped from him, he went on to marry another woman. What's the likelihood he treated ''her'' decently?
** Admittedly, most of Cal's behavior was due to him being--understandably--upset and humiliated that his fiancèe was cheating on him. Even her dancing with Jack at the third class party was [[ValuesDissonance tantamount to adultery for a first class lady in 1912.]] His actual wife may have been dutiful, obediant and utterly devoted to him for all we know. Not to mention the fact that it's also possible Cal had a HeelFaceTurn after the tragedy and losing Rose. It might have occurred to him with reflection that he basically drove Rose into the arms of another man with his behavior.

** Prior to returning to look for survivors, officer Lowe gathered together five boats and transfered all of the passengers from his boat to others. So Cal wasn't in the boat 14 when they found Rose.

* Rose narrates early on that she considered the Titanic "a slaveship", and her personal life after the disaster seems to have been freer and happier. It at least appears to be so. If Rose is not a completely selfish jerkass, she would also have to be a ShellShockedVeteran for the rest of her life, free, but knowing that her life was made possible by the expense of all those casualties left behind in the North Atlantic. No wonder she has been silent for 84 years. It is also no wonder that her DyingDream is filled with all the people she left behind - who presumably showed up to forgive her (as the whole shebang initially never was her fault to begin with).

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* As Old Rose is finishing up telling her story to the ''Keldysh'' crew and her granddaughter, one of the crew members mentions that this is the first time they even heard of a Jack Dawson being a victim of the sinking. While it's easy to assume that it's because most of the historical records only focused on the famous and/or rich people who died in the disaster (such as [[TogetherInDeath Isidor and Ida Straus]]), it makes total sense when you remember that Jack and Fabrizio won their tickets on the ''Titanic'' last minute in a poker game. Those tickets were registered to somebody else so there wouldn't have been a record of Jack buying a ticket or being a third-class passenger on the ship.

* FreezeFrameBonus: There is a total of ONE first class woman seen aboard during the final part of the sinking, behind Jack and Rose when they are running to the poop deck and momentarily stop to see the passengers jumping over the railing (Jack tells Rose that the longer they stay in the ship, the better). Four first class women died in the sinking historically: three were last seen by the bridge before it was swamped (Ida Strauss, Bess Allison, Edith Evans); nobody knows what happened to the fourth (Ann Isham). So we can conclude this one is her!

* If parts of the love story seem melodramatic, just remember that this is a 101 year old woman telling the story of her first love.

* The WMG page pointed out that Old Rose boarded the ''Keldysh'' with pictures of herself, which does seem self-absorbed. However, the pictures are lit in the same golden, dreamlike lighting of the Heaven!Titanic scenes. She might have brought the physical pictures along in remembrance of the fact that she made sure the efforts to save her weren’t in vain (Andrews giving her his life jacket and Joughin catching her, for example), and fulfilled all of her promises to Jack. Alternatively, the pictures aren’t real: just a handy visual rundown of Rose’s life (not unlike a clip show montage of her life post-Titanic), flashing before her eyes in a dream and/or before she dies.

*** If this is ''Rose'''s heaven, perhaps she and Jack have already reconciled, and he's waiting in the background because he knows Rose has been waiting a lot ''longer'' to be reunited with Jack than with him.

* On screen, the scene of the third class Irish mother putting her two children to bed so that they will die asleep, and not experience the horror of the sinking conscious is touching, yet when you consider that their room is at the back of the ship, in the bowels, you can only imagine the horrific scenario that will follow; the tilt getting so bad the kids are thrown from bed, the sounds of the deep groans in the ship, and the lights flickering, and then the ship breaking apart, their bedroom splintering all around them, and then the sudden impact of freezing cold water churning them all up hellishly in their coffin of a cabin, suddenly, it doesn't seem like a touching sentiment afterall.

** Related to this, it's hard not to wonder what the Swedish guys who lost their tickets at cards will think, not only at the thought that their (presumably) friends are quite probably dead, but that for the want of a bad hand at poker it could have very easily been them...