ArkaEvren
Gattaca

FILM · 1997 · USA

Gattaca

22 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026

  • Gattaca — production image

22 Interesting Facts About Gattaca

Interesting Facts (17)

  1. #001

    Jerome's ID photo is a digitally altered composite of the faces of Ethan Hawke and Jude Law.

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  2. #002

    When Gattaca was first released, a marketing campaign included ads inviting people to call in and have their children genetically engineered. Thousands of people called to request that their children's genetics be altered.

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  3. #003

    Most of the film's "futuristic" buildings are examples of a type of postmodern architecture called "brutalism" that was popular in the 1950s. The two large arches seen behind Jerome and Irene when she confesses that she had her sequencing done are the spillway of the Sepulveda Dam, built in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

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  4. #004

    Uma Thurman's character is named Irene Cassini. Cassini is the surname of the seventeenth-century Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who discovered Saturn's main rings as well as the prominent gap in the icy moons Iapetus, Dione, Rhea and Tethys. The space mission in the film is bound for Saturn. In 1997 NASA launched the Cassini space probe, which was headed for Saturn. In early 2005 it carried the Huygens probe, which was dropped onto Titan and explored the ground beneath the clouds.

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  5. #005

    The public address announcements at Gattaca Corporation headquarters are made in Esperanto, an artificial language invented in the nineteenth century.

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  6. #006

    Although "GATTACA" is defined as using the four DNA nucleotide abbreviations G, A, T and C, more specifically, when identifying genetic markers, tests measure "short tandem repeats" at specific DNA marker locations. These are known as "GATA or CA" repeats; hence GATTACA.

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  7. #007

    Gattaca's original ending featured images of Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and others. It included a statement that they would never have been born if genetic screening had existed in their lifetimes. Each photo came with a caption noting what their genetic defects were. For example, Einstein had dyslexia, Lincoln had Marfan Syndrome and Kennedy had Addison's disease. It ended by stating that you, the viewer, could not exist either. The ending was cut because test audiences were uncomfortable with the claim that they were genetically inferior.

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  8. #008

    Some of the interior and exterior locations of the Gattaca building actually belong to the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957. It is Wright's largest design ever made, and was largely built after his death in 1959. The central dome (prominent in the roof-cleaning scene) houses the county library.

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  9. #009

    The spiral staircase in Jerome's apartment has a helical structure like DNA.

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  10. #010

    Uma Thurman is taller than both Jude Law and Ethan Hawke, but she was made to appear much shorter in the film.

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  11. #011

    The FBI "hoover" headquarters was filmed at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. The main building (built in 1963) was designed for IBM by architect Eliot Noyes and is famous for its computer "punched card"-style windows.

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  12. #012

    Most of the cars in the film are electric; this is now widely regarded as an inevitability, but at the time the film was made it was only a supposition.

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  13. #013

    The exterior of Ethan Hawke and Jude Law's apartment building is the CLA (Classrooms, Laboratories and Administration) Building at Cal Poly Pomona, designed by architect Antoine Predock and completed in 1993. It was later discovered to sit directly on a fault line; worse, it failed to meet earthquake safety standards, which led the university to sue the contractor that built it. The building was approved for replacement in 2010 and was demolished in 2022.

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  14. #014

    The Marin County Civic Center, the filming location for the Gattaca Corporation, was also used in George Lucas's THX 1138 (1971).

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  15. #015

    Johnny Depp turned down the role of Jerome Eugene Morrow for The Brave (1997).

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  16. #016

    The cars used by the "Hoovers" are Rover P6s (sometimes called Rover 2000s), produced in Britain from 1963 to 1976. They were extremely popular among British police forces, where the 3.5-litre V8 model was used as a high-speed interceptor. Of the four P6 Rovers in the film, three were the 3500S versions of the 3.5-litre V8 with triple bonnet scoops for the North American market. The fourth was a North American 2000TC with triple bonnet scoops added by Columbia Pictures. All four cars had triple bonnet scoops.

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  17. #017

    Vincent's car is a 1963 Studebaker Avanti.

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Easter Eggs & References (2)

  1. #018

    FBI agents are called "Hoovers," a reference to the legendary top-level G-man J. Edgar Hoover, but also a clever nod to a brand of vacuum cleaner. Numerous vacuum-like devices are used to collect DNA evidence.

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  2. #019

    In the restaurant scene, when Vincent blows smoke into the wine glass and describes Titan's atmosphere as surrounded by clouds, the song playing in the background is "Nuages," the French word for "clouds."

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Deeper Meaning (3)

  1. #020

    A deleted scene (see Alternative Versions) reveals that head janitor Caesar (Ernest Borgnine) knew from the start that Jerome was Vincent. They meet before the mission is launched, and Vincent gives Caesar a telescope as a gift, implying that Caesar too had dreams of going into space but gave them up.

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  2. #021

    The symbols used to indicate Valid and Invalid status carry significant meaning. On the scanners, an infinity symbol appears next to the name of a Valid, signifying "infinite potential." A dagger appears next to the name of an Invalid. In taxonomy, a dagger beside a taxon indicates that it is extinct. In addition, the dagger symbol resembles a cross, and In-Valids are referred to as "God Children" (as Irene notes when Vincent reveals his true identity to her).

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  3. #022

    In one scene, Loren Dean is shown swimming in an endless pool (a swimming treadmill), implying his true identity.

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Sources & editorial notes

Reference databases

  • IMDb IMDb title page (trivia)

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