Books:
- Executive Meddling:
- Ender's Shadow was originally titled "Urchin". That title was re-included as that of the first chapter.
- An accidental example: Card intended for only Speaker For the Dead and Ender's Game to be written. His agent accidentally pitched them as "the Ender trilogy", and Card decided to use the opening to write Xenocide.
- Inspiration for the Work: Orson Scott Card got the idea for Ender's Game as a kid, when he tried to theorize what the military of the future would use to train soldiers in space, thus imagining the Battle Room. That manifested into the original short story, but the full novel didn't emerge until he was trying to decide who would be the protagonist of Speaker for the Dead, when his wife suggested it could be Ender.
- Referenced by...:
- Bliss from Mouse (2017) owns a copy of Ender's Game.
- The third DTV Futurama movie is called "Bender's Game", replacing Ender's name for a character in the work whose name rhymes with theirs, although the plots are very unlike each other.
- Science Marches On: Notably averted in the remarkably accurate descriptions of tablet-sized computers, the Internet, and the blogosphere, in a book written before the creation of the World Wide Web. Although, as xkcd points out
, it missed the mark on the blogosphere in terms of scale if nothing else. - What Could Have Been: The Shadow books were originally going to be written by different authors, each centering on a different member of Ender's friends.
- Word of God: In one interview on National Review, Card says that he was inspired by Bruce Catton's histories of the American Civil War, and that part of the message was that war means sacrificing the innocence of young people for the Greater Good and that it is the duty of the old to make sure their civilization is worth it.
Movie
- All-Star Cast: Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Abigail Breslin and more. In fact, the marketing campaign made a point of including "Academy Award Nominee" and "Academy Award Winner" in front of every name that qualified to show just how many heavy hitters were in the cast. Even Harrison Ford's nomination for Witness was included even though he normally doesn't have any awards or nominations mentioned above his credit.
- Box Office Bomb: The film was budgeted at $110 million not counting publicity, and it only made back $125 million worldwide. This is mainly due to an extremely poor marketing campaign that, in assuming that all audiences were familiar with the novel, not only made the story rather unclear, but suffered from uncertainty about its target audience, and the tight competition it faced from Thor: The Dark World. The backlash the film received from the LGBT community due to Card's less-than-favorable views on homosexuality and gay marriage did not help Lionsgate one bit, despite the fact that Card actually makes NO money from the film's ticket sales, and director Gavin Hood and co-star Harrison Ford stating repeatedly that they support gay rights.
- Dawson Casting: The Battle School students are all meant to be ten years old, but they're all played by actors who are very obviously in their teens.
- Development Hell: The film was mired there for decades. Unusually, Card was partially involved in keeping it there, as he preferred having no film than having one with a poor script and a bad child actor in the main role.
- Enforced Method Acting: The film was shot in sequence with Ford keeping his distance from Butterfield and the other kids at first so that their being in awe of The Harrison Ford (as well as their physical growth) would work for rather than against the story.
- Fake American: The British Asa Butterfield as Ender.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: The command school sequences show the characters using Nostromo keypads as they give commands to the fleet.
- Playing with Character Type: Harrison Ford is known for playing heroic characters, among them Han Solo, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold that was likable. Ford's portrayal of Graff is just the opposite - a cold, calculating figure that isn't concerned for the safety of his cadets so much as he's concerned with overwhelming an alien race.
- Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Orson Scott Card's vocal cameo was removed from the final cut after threats to boycott the film followed anti-gay remarks he had made. Still didn't help its box office chances, though.
- Saved from Development Hell: Finally released in October and November of 2013.Card: My favorite thing about the end of 2013: I will never again have to answer questions about when the Ender's Game movie will come out.
- Stillborn Franchise: Plans were made for a sequel, but the underwhelming box office performance has left that in doubt. That being said, the plans were to follow with the Fleet School series instead of the actual follow-ups (which are completely different in tone from Ender's Game, slower-paced, more philosophical, and eventually reaching 2001 levels of oddity; in Card's own admission, Speaker for the Dead is unfilmable for being "talking heads, interrupted by moments of excruciating and unwatchable violence").
- What Could Have Been:
- Jake Lloyd as Ender and Dakota Fanning as Petra. And yes, Card knew of how hated Lloyd was and felt a better script would have done him justice.
- Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One and The Perfect Storm) was initially going to direct this film
- In one draft, Colonel Graff and Mazer Rackham were the same character.
- The twist of the book would have been known from the beginning in Card's draft.
- At one point during the film's production, effects studio Digital Domain (Transformers (2007), Real Steel) were co-producers. Subverted in that they did wind up co-producing the film anyway.
- Card suggested that the scenes for the P.O.V. Sequel Ender's Shadow could be filmed at the same time as Ender's Game. While Gavin Hood wrote up a script for Shadow, the budget limited them from filming both movies.
- Flaming Lips wrote a EP that they suggested as a concept soundtrack for the producers. Only one of the songs made it onto the film (over the end credits).
