Trivia / The Big Short

• Actor Allusion:
  • It's not the first time Christian Bale has played an American character who works in finance and who hasn't mastered a lot of the finer points of social interaction. This one, however, is really good at his job. In addition, if you stretch "finance" to heading a billion dollar company, he's really made a career out of this.
  • Brad Pitt plays an anarchist-survivalist who's quite eccentric, a bit weird about answering his phone and grows his own crops. His plan also hinges on a massive disaster in the financial sector.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazil: The Great Bet
  • Canada: The Heist of the Century
  • Croatia: Bet of the Century
  • Czech Republic: Bet on Uncertainty
  • Estonia: Big Lie
  • Japan: Money Short: A Splendid Reversal
  • Portugal: The Wall Street Fall
  • Romania: The Brokers of the Apocalypse
  • Slovenia: Great Move
  • Ukraine: Drop Game
• Creator's Oddball: Director Adam McKay takes a significant departure from his goofball, purely comedic style as seen in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Step Brothers and The Other Guys and adopts a more dramatic, darker tone.
• Fake American:
  • British Christian Bale as Michael Burry
  • British Rafe Spall as the American Danny Moses
  • Ryan Gosling, who is Canadian, playing Jared Vennett.
• Fish Eyes: No special effects were used in Christian Bale's onscreen recreation of Michael Burry's Glass Eye. He can do that voluntarily.
• The Foreign Subtitle: In France, it's called The Big Short: The Heist of the Century.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Steve Carell, mostly known for his comedic work, plays one of the movie's most dramatic, serious characters — the pessimistic and stressed-out Mark Baum.
  • Brad Pitt, famous for playing cool, charismatic anti-heroes and villains, plays a quiet, anti-social conspiracy theorist who is arguably the most moral person in the movie. He's essentially doing a Robert Redford, the actor he is most often compared to.
  • Heartthrob Ryan Gosling, known for playing either straightforward protagonists or cool, conflicted stoics, plays a smarmy, self-centered, arrogant scumbag who's smugly aware of his own villainy.
• What Could Have Been: Margot Robbie's cameo was originally scripted to feature Scarlett Johansson.

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