Trivia / Rogue One

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• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • It was Donnie Yen's idea that Chirrut would be blind, which Gareth Edwards loved and rolled with.
  • Krennic wasn't supposed to wear his Badass Cape throughout the whole movie, only when confronting the Ersos at their farm on Eadu. Ben Mendelsohn loved it so much that he just kept wearing it in every subsequent scene, and it became essentially the most iconic feature of the character.
• Approval of God:
  • George Lucas really liked the movie when he saw it, much to the relief of Gareth Edwards. His response was considerably warmer than the one he had for The Force Awakens.
  • Several tweets from Stephen Stanton (the voice of Tarkin in The Clone Wars and Rebels) have indicated that Stanton highly approved of both Guy Henry's performance and of the CGI used to recreate Peter Cushing's face.
  • In an interview with Diego Luna, Hayden Christensen admitted that not only did he approve of Darth Vader's portrayal in this film, but that he considers Rogue One to be one of the best Star Wars films ever made, due to the huge risks it took in terms of storytelling.
• Ascended Fanon: The film canonises the popular theory that the Death Star's infamous weakness was not merely an oversight, but an act of intentional sabotage by the engineer that designed it.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Fans and memes frequently misquote Krennic's line "We were this close" by finishing it with "to success" rather than "to providing peace and security to the galaxy."
• Cast the Expert:
  • The rebel reinforcements who jump out of the U-Wing during the battle of Scarif are all actual United States army veterans.
  • Alan Tudyk's previous experience performing mo-cap was a factor in his casting. He originally thought he was being brought on as an advisor before realizing that his knowledge was entirely outdated.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Gareth Edwards also offered Donnie Yen the role of Baze Malbus to test his interest in joining the movie.
• Content Leak: Due to Jiang Wen's limited knowledge of the English language, he accidentally let it slip that Chirrut dies during the Rogue One presentation at the 2016 Star Wars Celebration event while explaining his character. Thankfully, he didn't spoil everyone else's deaths in the process.
• Corpsing: After Alan Tudyk improvised K-2SO slapping Cassian's face, you can see Diego Luna trying to hold back a laugh while covering his mouth.
• Dawson Casting
  • Jyn Erso is supposed to be 21, and yet she is portrayed by a 32 year old Felicity Jones.
  • Cassian Andor is listed as 26, but Diego Luna was 35-36 at the time of shooting. The prequel series Andor Retcons Cassian's backstory and ages him up by seven years, making him 33 at the time of the film's events and retroactively averting this trope.
• Deleted Scene: See here.
• Executive Meddling: Paramount requested Lucasfilm change the title of the movie out of fear that audiences would confuse Lucasfilm's movie for their own movie, by the similarly-named Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, even though both films were set for release over a year apart from one another. Instead, the two studios came to an agreement that the movie could keep its name so long as information about the movie was not revealed until after Rogue Nation was released, save for bits of information discussed at major private events. This was ultimately a pointless effort, given that all of Lucasfilm's marketing focus in 2015 went toward The Force Awakens.
• He Also Did: Jiang Wen is better known as a director in China (though many are also aware of his actor status as he stars in many of his directed films), so him starring in a Hollywood production is quite a surprise to many in China.
• In Memoriam: After Carrie Fisher's death, later showings of Rogue One dedicated it to her memory.
• Missing Trailer Scene: A handful of scenes featured in the trailers and teasers are not present in the movie, although no major sequences involving visual effects are completely cut out of the film.
  • Jyn's "This is a rebellion, isn't it? I rebel." was taken out of the movie entirely after being shown in several advertisements, some of which showed multiple takes of the line.
  • Saw's speech to a younger Jyn about what she could become is not shown. The last we see of Saw in that time period is when he rescues her on Lah'mu.
  • Baze's "They destroyed our home!" is not spoken in the film.
  • The shot of the Stormtroopers wading through the waters of Scarif is not shown.
  • The trailers showed Jyn running through an Imperial facility with the Death Star plans hard drive. This scene was shot at the Canary Wharf station of the London Underground, which was redressed with Star Wars-style hardware, and the crew could only film there for one night while the station was closed for business. The entire scene was dropped from the final cut.
  • Three scenes appear to have been cut for the purposes of continuity, possibly as a result of the reshoots allegedly revising the third act. The first is the scene of Krennic marching through the surf after the battle died down. The second is the shot of Jyn staring down a TIE fighter on a railway. The third is the scene of Jyn leading the charge against the AT-ACTs while handling the yet-to-be-delivered Death Star plans. These changes were most likely put into place in order to give Jyn Erso and Orson Krennic an actual confrontation at the end, something that wouldn't have been possible if the continuity of these scenes remained unchanged. Some shots from the teaser trailer's climactic moment can be spotted spliced into the action on the ground, carefully edited to avoid showing Jyn or Cassian (or the AT-ACTs, which had not been revealed at that point in the final film).
  • Any shots of Jyn, Cassian, and K2 fighting on the beaches. Which is shame, because Alan Tudyk stated before the film released that some of his proudest work on the film was managing to run in the sand on his stilts.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: The Mexican-born Diego Luna requested to dub himself as Cassian Andor in the Latin American Spanish dub, and Disney obliged.
• Network to the Rescue: The film was originally an idea proposed by Industrial Light & Magic effects supervisor John Knoll to George Lucas, who approved of it prior to selling Lucasfilm to Disney. Once Kathleen Kennedy replaced Lucas as CEO of Lucasfilm and learned about the project, she greenlit the movie.
• On-Set Injury: In an interview for Andor, six years after this movie, Diego Luna claimed to have cracked a rib while doing the stunt where Cassian and Jyn jump onto the records tower, but he also adds that he didn't tell anyone back then and can't prove it. He also scratched his eye while filming for the Battle of Scarif, likely for a scene that didn't even get used due to the heavy reshoots for the third act.
• The Original Darrin: After being voiced by Phil LaMarr in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Jimmy Smits returns to portray Bail Organa for the first time since Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
• The Other Darrin: Since the film takes place a very short time before A New Hope, which was filmed nearly four decades before Rogue One, some characters appearing in both had to be recast, including in various foreign dubs.
  • Spencer Wilding replaces Hayden Christensen inside Darth Vader's iconic suit for this film (James Earl Jones still voices him however). Probably for the best, as Vader is only briefly seen unmasked inside his bacta tank before remaining masked for the duration of the film. Stuntman Daniel Naprous also donned the costume for the action sequence Vader appears in.
  • Peter Cushing passed away in 1994 due to prostate cancer and Wayne Pygram (Revenge of the Sith) did not come back. As such, Tarkin's face was recreated through CGI with the body and voice of Guy Henry.
  • Ditto for Leia, as a much younger Carrie Fisher's face had to be recreated through CGI on actress Ingvild Deila's body, due to Fisher's age.
  • Peter Geddis was too old to play Captain Raymus Antilles again after A New Hope and Rohan Nichol didn't reprise the role after Revenge of the Sith. In this film, he was played by Tim Beckmann.
  • Ian McElhinney plays Jan Dodonna; Alex McCrindle passed away in 1990 (he would have been 105 by the time Rogue One came out).
  • Kenny Baker didn't get to reprise his role as R2-D2 for the droid's cameo as his health worsened after The Force Awakens. He passed away on August 13, 2016.
  • Forest Whitaker portrays the live-action Saw Gerrera in this film in lieu of his voice actor from Star Wars: The Clone Wars Andrew Kishino. Understandable, given how Saw is in his twilight years and is a barely functional shell of who he used to be.
  • For the European French version, the iconic voice of Darth Vader from 1980 to 2005, Georges Aminel, passed away in 2007. Philippe Catoire (who voiced Vader in Star Wars Rebels) replaced him.
  • For the French dub again, Christian Gonon replaced Henri Virlogeux (A New Hope, passed in 1995), Pierre Laurent (The Clone Wars) and Guy Chapelier (second voice in The Clone Wars and other animated series) as Tarkin.
  • In the Japanese dub, Taiten Kusunoki voices Darth Vader, reprising that role from the dub of Star Wars Rebels as Vader's previous Japanese VA, Tōru Ōhira, died in 2016. Also, Princess Leia is voiced by Miyuki Kawasho, rather than her official voice actress (Gara Takashima), as she is too old to reprise her younger self.
  • Ditto with Vader's European and Latin American Spanish voice actors, since his previous ones, Constantino Romero and Federico Romano respectively, sadly passed away. He is now voiced by Pedro Tena and Sebastian Llapur, the voice actors who already voiced the character in Rebels.
  • Grand Moff Tarkin in the Spanish dub was voiced by Jordi Ribes as Tarkin's original voice actor, José Luis Sansalvador, passed away in 2006. However, for Leia's only quote at the end of the film, María Luisa Solá did not reprise and was replaced by a younger actress (Nerea Alfonso) too.
  • In the Hungarian dub, László Horányi voiced Vader after all four of Vader's old voice actors have passed away. Horányi also dubbed him in Rebels. Tarkin was dubbed by László Újréti as his original dubbing actor László Versényi had died earlier in 2016. Tomasz Galbenisz took over from Imre Józsa as C-3PO, as he had also died earlier that year. Leia however kept her voice actress from the 1997 re-dub of the Original Trilogy.
• Playing Against Type: Galen's Japanese VA, Masahiko Tanaka, who is well-known for voicing villains or outright jerkasses, being his most famous role was voicing the Ax-Crazy mercenary Gauron, but here plays a loving dad who was forced to work for the Empire.
• Playing with Character Type: Mads Mikkelsen is typically typecast as villains in American productions such as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal, and Kaecilius in Doctor Strange (2016). Here he works for the Evil Empire as a scientist incredibly crucial to their apocalypse-inducing weapon... but as a Kidnapped Scientist and loving father who was forced to develop it. He's a much more heroic figure than many other figures in that faction.
• Production Nickname: The two Imperial Star Destroyers at the Battle of Scarif, Intimidator and Persecutor, were affectionately called Timmy and Percy by the ILM crew.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • According to Star Wars Insider, Felicity Jones is a huge Star Wars fan and "dropped everything" in order to join the film's cast.
  • And it's not just her — everyone pretty much dorked out when George Lucas visited the set of the movie.
  • The way Diego Luna says "I still can't believe I'm in a Star Wars movie!" in several interviews is positively giddy.
• Prop Recycling:
  • The CGI models used for several Rebellion background ships (the Hammerhead corvettes, the Braha'tok gunship, and the Ghost herself) were the same digital assets from Star Wars Rebels with a photorealistic skin applied.
  • According to Pablo Hidalgo, Mon Mothma's wig was a Weasley wig from the Harry Potter films.
• Real-Life Relative: Young Jyn is portrayed by two child actresses, who are also real-life sisters, for two scenes set in different time periods. Beau Gadsdon portrayed 8-year-old Jyn for the opening scene, while Dolly Gadsdon portrayed 4-year-old Jyn for the Coruscant flashback.
• Refitted for Sequel
  • The TIE Boarding Crafts accompanying Vader's shuttle and TIE Fighters had first been conceived for A New Hope before being reused for the TIE Bombers starting with The Empire Strikes Back.
  • An idea for Tarkin's cameo in Revenge of the Sith was to digitally recreate the character using footage from A New Hope, but couldn't be implemented due to a number of reasons. The biggest being that there was no footage of Peter Cushing wearing the full Imperial uniform the shot required, so the idea was scrapped, though it did lead to them finding an impressive lookalike. The basics of the idea would later end up in this film, with Tarkin digitally recreated using motion capture while unused footage and audio of Red & Gold Leader from A New Hope were used during the climactic final battle.
  • The Decraniated seen as background extras on Jedha were originally conceptualized for Maz Kanata's castle in The Force Awakens. Considering what the Decraniated are, they were likely unused for being too disturbing to be used as servants for a relatively noble pirate and Rogue One being a Darker and Edgier film, was seemingly a better place to use them.
  • Darth Vader's castle was based on an early idea for The Empire Strikes Back that was scrapped later on.
  • Chirrut's blessing, "May the Force of others be with you", appears in an early script for A New Hope, which predates the concept of the Force.
• Role Reprise:
  • James Earl Jones voices Darth Vader for the last time in this film. While he's credited as Vader for Obi-Wan Kenobi, it's actually a synthetic recreation of his voice provided by a speech-to-speech AI program, with Hayden Christensen providing the base performance.
  • Genevieve O'Reilly returned as Mon Mothma after playing the character in a cameo for Revenge of the Sith, which had the majority of her scenes cut.
  • Jimmy Smits, who played Bail Organa in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and the Legends video game The Force Unleashed, also returned.
  • The actors to portray Red & Gold Leader from A New Hope return to voice their roles (somewhat; Red Leader's actor, Drewe Henley, had retired from filmmaking after A New Hope, which was his final film role, due to depression, and begin running a bed and breakfast in England eventually. Plus he died in 2016, during production of Rogue One, but they used archival footage for Red Leader Garven Dreis. Angus MacInnes, who played Gold Leader, DID reprise his role and recorded a few new lines).
  • While a body double is used—with her face imposed over the double—Carrie Fisher provides the voice for her appearance as Leia taken from archived footage. It along with The Last Jedi also doubles as Carrie Fisher's last film roles, as she died just a couple weeks after Rogue One premiered.
  • Anthony Daniels makes a cameo appearance as C-3PO.
• Scully Box: Given K-2SO is a foot taller than Alan Tudyk, he was either on stilts (exact height) or with a K2 head cutout above him (exact line of sight for the other actors) during filming.
• So My Kids Can Watch:
  • Actor Donnie Yen expressed excitement in being involved in the film for this reason, considering his other movies are considerably more visceral in their violence.
  • As told in the extras, Jiang Wen's sons translated the script for Rogue One for him and asked him to take on the role for them.
• Star-Making Role: For Diego Luna as Cassian Andor.
• Technology Marches On: Much of the film's plot is driven by a model of information technology that was dominant when the first Star Wars was made in 1977. Plans for the Death Star are stored offline, in a single physical location, in clear text on what resemble large data storage tapes as opposed to being stored in an online cloud storage system protected by encryption, which was the state of the art at the time the Rogue One was produced. The plethora of single function consoles is another throwback to the age of limited display and computing power.
• Throw It In!:
  • Having Chirrut Îmwe be blind was actually Donnie Yen's idea, and so, consequently, was the "Are you kidding me? I'm blind" line when Saw's goons bag him.
  • Alan Tudyk has implied that K-2's signature slouch was added during filming when it was realized that his mo-cap performance was more convincing with one. It's also contrasted later on when he's around other K-2 units still working loyally for the Empire that walk completely upright, with no personality.
  • K-2 slapping Cassian upside the head when pretending to be his guard was improvised by Alan Tudyk. If you look for it, you can see Diego Luna hiding his laughter.
  • The cast and crew admit Tudyk was always making up funny things to say. Gareth Edwards in particular said half the alternate takes of the K-2 are shaky because he is laughing and loses balance of the camera (in one particular scene, he bit his lip so as to keep still and not need to film again).
  • Krennic was only supposed to wear his white cape in the opening scene (since no other Imperial officers in the series have been shown wearing one indoors), but Ben Mendelsohn loved it so much that he simply continued to wear it. Gareth Edwards let him, since being the only person in the room wearing a cape was perfectly suited to Krennic's vanity.
• Troubled Production: The extent of the problems have been kept vague, but it is acknowledged that much of the story structure was rebuilt in reshoots long after principle photography. The theory is that Gareth Edwards was aiming for a more documentary style and early cuts were not working to the studio's satisfaction, and Tony Gilroy took over director duties to overhaul the story (resulting in a number of Missing Trailer Scenes). To their credit both men have admitted to the collaborative process and view the final film as the best outcome they could have gotten.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Brie Larson, Tatiana Maslany, Rooney Mara, and Kate Mara screen-tested for Jyn Erso before Felicity Jones was cast.
  • Aaron Paul, Sam Claflin, and Édgar Ramírez auditioned for Cassian Andor before the casting of Diego Luna.
  • Jet Li was offered the role of Chirrut Îmwe.
  • Alexandre Desplat was the film's original composer, but was replaced by Michael Giacchino after the film was extensively reshot, as Desplat was no longer available to score the new footage.
  • John Knoll actually conceived the idea as a TV show back in 2003, when Lucasfilm was looking for ways to continue the franchise after Revenge of the Sith. When the show was canned over budget concerns, Knoll's concept was retooled into the movie.
  • Knoll's original pitch had Darth Vader as a mere cameo with no lines, as well as the complete absence of the Force. Gareth Edwards had the explicit Force elements and Jedha added to the film because he felt that a Star Wars movie without the Force simply didn't feel right, while the studio beefed up Vader's appearance so that they could tease his involvement in the marketing.
  • Lyra Erso was originally going to be a former Jedi who had survived Order 66, but this plot point was dropped, as the creative team thought it'd be better to examine what life in the Star Wars universe was like for normal people after the fall of the Jedi Order. Elements of the idea can still be seen in the final film, such as the Kyber crystal necklace she gives to Jyn in the opening scene, and the fact that her clothes resembled Jedi attire.
  • In Knoll's original story draft of the film, Krennic served as an Imperial spy on the Rogue One team, a plot element that was removed entirely when Gary Whitta joined the writing process. Krennic was also going to have a boss he would report to, named Willix Cree. The name "Willix" would later reappear in the Rogue One Visual Guide as one of Cassian's spy aliases.
  • The Rogue One squad was made up of Jyn, Kaytoo (who originally was a protocol droid), a Rebel pilot named Ria Talla (whose name would be used as a fake identity in Rebels), an alien duo named Senna and Lunak (the latter would’ve been reused for the now-cancelled game Star Wars: Ragtag), and two other rebels named Dray Nevis and Jerris Kastal. Jyn and Kaytoo would be carried over, Ria would presumably become Bodhi, Senna and Lunak were replaced by Baze and Chirrut, and Cassian replaced the other two rebels.
  • Prominently shown in the trailers, Jyn, Cassian and Kaytoo were to take part in the ground battle on Scarif after retrieving the Death Star Plans. As originally written and filmed, the transmitter was not in the same building as the archive. Once they retrieved the plans, they had to fight their way across the beaches to the transmitter building to beam them up to the fleet. The bulk of the reshoots actually went into streamlining this sequence so that the transmitter and archive were the same building.
  • 0:44 of this video shows behind-the-scenes footage of what would've been Kaytoo being shot to death and falling limp besides Cassian's corpse.
  • The first draft of the script had the heroes survive the final battle, as Gareth Edwards believed that there was no way the studio would let him kill off all the main characters in a Star Wars movie. (This is why Felicity Jones was contracted for two movies despite her character dying at the end.) To his great surprise, both Disney and Kathleen Kennedy gave him permission to pull a "Everybody Dies" Ending in the final act, reasoning that there was really no other way to end a direct prequel featuring characters who had never been seen in any of the other movies. More specifically, the original ending would have had Jyn and Cassian managing to escape Scarif on a ship and rendezvous with the Tantive IV right as Darth Vader's fleet arrives. They only have enough time to transmit the plans to Leia's ship before their ship is destroyed, but an escape pod can be seen leaving the wreckage implying that they both survived.
  • Gary Whitta had two ideas for the ending of the Battle of Scarif that were both scrapped. The first idea would've had Krennic survive the Death Star blast on the Imperial base despite everyone else dying there... only for Darth Vader to Force-choke him to death aboard a Star Destroyer. This was scrapped due to Lucasfilm thinking Krennic surviving the blast would've been improbable. The second ending would've had Vader himself enter Scarif's surface to slaughter the Rebels personally, only to be too late to stop the Death Star plans from being transmitted to the Rebels. This ending was reworked to Vader boarding the Profundity, slaughtering all the Rebels firing at him before the sole surviving Rebel takes the plans to Leia's ship.
  • The first draft ended with a wedding and not an "Everybody Dies" Ending.
  • Though ILM and the production crew were confident that Tarkin could be resurrected for the film, back-up plans were made in case they were unable to portray the character. These included relegating Tarkin's lines to other characters and potentially having Tarkin only appear in a hologram.
  • Phil Lord & Chris Miller almost made a cameo, and were even fitted into costumes on the set for it. It would have served as a foreshadowing to them directing the Han Solo film for the Star Wars Anthology series, which they were ultimately dropped from.
• Word of God:
  • Darth Vader's castle is located on Mustafar from Revenge of the Sith — the planet is one of the only ones that are not given an expository label, so it was confirmed through this way instead. The reason that the planet was not labeled was for the purpose of avoiding an Interface Spoiler that would have revealed Darth Vader's presence in the story a little too early.
  • Pablo Hidalgo confirmed on Twitter that General Syndulla and the unnamed rebel VCX-100 is indeed a promoted Hera and the Ghost.
  • Gareth Edwards revealed in a podcast that he was going to do an alternate ending with the main characters surviving as he believed Disney and Lucasfilm wouldn't approve the original ending with the entire cast being killed by the end of film. To his surprise and relief, Kathy Kennedy, the President of Lucasfilm, and Disney weren't bothered with the ending where the main characters died and allowed him to film it.
• Word of Saint Paul: In an interview for the Vanity Fair YouTube channel, Diego Luna claims that Cassian Andor is a great cook whose specialty is chilaquiles^note a dish of fried strips of corn tortillas cooked in salsa and topped with cheese that is specific to Luna's native Mexico. (Supposedly, Luna himself is a bit of a hobbyist cook and makes a mean chilaquiles himself.) This tidbit has zero bearing on the movie, but fans have naturally latched onto it, and many depictions of Cassian in fanfic will at least mention him cooking. This would get a bit of a reference six years later in the prequel series Andor, where it's mentioned that a sixteen-year-old Cassian was a camp cook in a military operation on Mimban.
• Write What You Know: Gary Whitta, EIC at PC Gamer magazine during the '90s, more or less wrote a film adaptation of a popular '90s' Star Wars PC game.
• Written by Cast Member: Since Bodhi’s backstory isn’t covered in the movie, Riz Ahmed got to create it. According to him, Bodhi became an Imperial cargo pilot so he could gather money for his poor and ill mother. Unfortunately, his mother passed away shortly before the events of Rogue One, but since that means he no longer had anything to lose, that opened him up to helping Galen and the rebels.
• You Sound Familiar: In the French dub, Darth Vader started being voiced by Philippe Catoire with this film. He previously dubbed Tion Medon in Revenge of the Sith and Count Dooku in season 5 and season 6 of The Clone Wars.

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