The wounds on Russell Crowe's face in the opening battle scene were real: his horse spooked and pinned him against tree branches. The stitches on his cheek are clearly visible in the scene where he tells Commodus he wants to return home.
Hans Zimmer's score ranks among the best-selling film soundtracks of all time.
Five tigers were used in the scene where Maximus fights the Gaul Tigris. A veterinarian armed with tranquilizer darts stood by throughout the shoot; for safety, Crowe was kept at least 15 feet away from the tigers.
The opening battle scene was shot in Bourne Woods in Surrey, England. The Forestry Commission was planning to clear the area, so Ridley Scott gladly offered his facilities to burn the forest down; the commission happily accepted the offer.
Ridley Scott made it clear from the start that this 'sword and sandal' film would not include the genre's clichés (such as eating grapes and drinking from goblets). He aimed to create a more realistic vision of ancient Rome.
The entire Germania battle sequence took 20 days to complete.
The crowd scenes in the Colosseum used real extras, digital extras and 400 cardboard cutout spectators.
The tigers grew accustomed to the crew over several days of filming and were not bothered by the activity around them; the real challenge was getting them to move when performance time came.
Ridley Scott insisted that the scene in which Maximus sees Commodus practicing with a sword appear early in the film, so that the audience (and Maximus) would know what Commodus was capable of in the Colosseum.
In the iconic shot of Maximus's hand brushing the ears of wheat, the hand belongs to Russell Crowe's stunt double, Stuart Clark.
The film was shot in chronological order.
Costume designer Janty Yates and her team created more than 10,000 costumes for the cast and extras.
The tigers enter the arena through trapdoors in the wooden floor; in at least one shot, the gladiators rise to the floor on a kind of elevator. Both the elevators (operated with winches and pulleys) and the trapdoors were genuinely used in the Colosseum in Rome.
Oliver Reed told Ridley Scott that after five o'clock his life was his own; Scott agreed at once.
When Ridley Scott visited the real Colosseum, he told production designer Arthur Max it was 'too small', and they designed an exaggerated 'Rome of the imagination' inspired by English and French Romantic painters and the Nazi architect Albert Speer.
The blurry effect visible in half of the battle scene between Maximus's army and the Germanic tribes was not planned. The scene began shooting in the early evening but ran so long that the light faded. To maintain lighting continuity, cinematographer John Mathieson shot the scenes at a very low frame rate; the lost frames were duplicated in post-production.
More than 27,000 pieces of armor were made specifically for this film.
Maximus's pet wolf was played by Kyte, a female Tervuren Belgian Shepherd. The production could not use a real wolf because Britain's strict anti-rabies laws prevented the import of wolves. Kyte also appeared for seven years on the British soap opera EastEnders as a male Tervuren named Wellard.
Most of the animals were borrowed from a zoo in Rabat, Morocco, to get around the country's strict animal import rules.
Editor Pietro Scalia placed the shot of Maximus walking through the wheat field at the beginning of the film; the shot had actually been filmed for the finale.
Some of the Roman cavalry in the opening battle were real soldiers: twenty members of the British Army's King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery appeared in the film. These soldiers were highly skilled riders, as they had to drive horse-drawn ceremonial guns weighing more than a ton each and without brakes at high speed.
More than 20,000 arrows were made for the opening battle in Germania.
According to Ridley Scott, the hidden dagger Commodus pulls from his arm in the final duel is the same dagger Maximus uses to subdue and kill him. Commodus had used this dagger to secretly stab Maximus before the fight, so both men died by the same weapon.
The production used up all the plaster on the island of Malta and had to bring in more material.
In the opening battle, Roman soldiers are seen advancing on the barbarians with pila (javelins), whereas in reality these weapons were thrown at the enemy. The pilum was too fragile to be used as a spear because its tip was designed to break and bend on impact, preventing the enemy from throwing them back.
Sir Ridley Scott stated that the opening moments, in which Maximus watches a bird before the battle, were improvised between him and Russell Crowe. That day, despite there being no dialogue in the script, they needed to shoot a moment that introduced Maximus.
Sir Ridley Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson used multiple cameras shooting at various frame rates and a forty-five-degree shutter to create stop-motion effects similar to the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan.
The film was shot over a period of eighteen weeks.
Cicero (Tommy Flanagan), waiting to speak with Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) outside the Colosseum, stands beside the foot of a giant statue. This foot also appears in a deleted scene with Proximo (Oliver Reed). The rest of the statue is not visible, but judging by the size of the foot, it is most likely the Colossus of Nero, the ninety-eight-foot (thirty-metre) bronze statue that Emperor Nero had erected in his own likeness. The statue did not always stand beside the Colosseum; it was moved there years after its construction and is probably the reason the stadium is called the 'Colosseum' (its official name is the Flavian Amphitheatre). Years later, the real Emperor Commodus changed the statue's head, turning it into a statue depicting himself as Hercules, but it was restored after his death. The statue itself was most likely toppled and looted during earthquakes or barbarian invasions, leaving only its base. The rest of the statue is not shown in the film because accurate visual depictions of it have not survived to the present day.
To build the arena where Maximus fights his first battles, the team used basic materials and local construction techniques to produce the thirty-thousand-seat mud-brick arena.
Temperatures in the gladiator arena often exceeded 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit).
Twenty-four chariots were built for the film, but only six appear on screen.
British post-production company The Mill was responsible for most of the film's CGI effects. Its tasks included placing real tigers shot against a blue screen into the fight scenes, adding smoke trails and extending the flight paths of the flaming arrows in the opening battle. They also used two thousand live actors and actresses to create a CGI crowd of roughly thirty-five thousand people. One of their biggest challenges was creating a digital body double for the late Oliver Reed.
In Malta, a sixteen-metre-high replica of the Roman Colosseum, about one third of its size and made mostly of plaster and plywood, was built (the other two thirds and the remaining height were added digitally). The replica took several months to build and cost an estimated 1 million dollars. The rear of the complex provided a rich supply of Ancient Roman street furniture, colonnades, gates, statues and marketplaces for other shooting needs. The complex was served by tented 'costume villages' containing changing rooms, storage areas, armourers and other facilities. The rest of the building was added digitally with computer-generated imagery using set design plans and textures referenced from live action, and was processed in three layers to provide lighting flexibility for compositing in Flame and Inferno software. In the Colosseum scenes, only the bottom two tiers are filled with real people. The other thousands are computer animation or cardboard cutouts.
A small portion (about five seconds) of the background noise just before the battle in Germania was taken from the film Zulu (1964). Part of the mocking chant of the Zulu warriors used just before the battle can be heard.
During filming, Sir Ridley Scott wore the red hat Gene Hackman wore in Crimson Tide (1995), which was directed by his brother Tony.
The opening battle scene and the artificial snow that follows were created using small rolled-up pieces of paper.
The Mill used 2,000 actors and actresses to create a CGI crowd of 35,000 virtual actors and actresses. They achieved this by filming the actors from different angles, having them perform a variety of actions, and then placing them on cards, using motion capture tools to track their movements for three-dimensional compositing.
Contrary to rumours, Enya recorded nothing for this film's music. The song merely sounds like something she could have recorded. The song, and in fact most of the soundtrack, was composed and sung by Lisa Gerrard.
Ostia, where Maximus's army waits, is on the western coast of Italy, about 14 miles southwest of Rome. It is part of the metropolitan area of modern Rome.
Rod Vass and the Armordillo team produced one hundred sets of steel armour and five hundred and fifty sets of polyurethane armour for this production using a spray polyurethane system they developed specifically for it.
The leather armour Maximus wears as a gladiator was originally made for Russ Tamblyn's character Orm in the 1964 Viking epic The Long Ships. It was later also used by a Roman centurion in The Last Temptation of Christ and by one of Ragnar's crew in Vikings.
The production team went on a six-week research trip covering Italy, France, North Africa and England, which fell within the borders of the Roman Empire before its collapse.
Trujillo, where Maximus tells the Emperor his home is in the hills, is located in present-day Spain, southwest of Madrid.
The making-of documentary Strength and Honor: Creating the World of 'Gladiator' (2005) on the Special Edition DVD is nearly three and a half hours long, an hour longer than the film itself.
Because of high costs and the difficulty of finding materials, all the props, sets and costumes were produced by the team.
The Roman Colosseum scenes were shot at Fort Ricasoli in Malta; a one-third-scale replica was built up to 16 metres high, with the remaining two thirds and the height added digitally.
In the Spanish-dubbed version, Maximus says he is from Emerita Augusta (present-day Mérida). Spanish dubbers argued that Trujillo did not have the 'qualifications' to be the gladiator's birthplace.
This film, which deals with the aftermath of Marcus Aurelius's death, shares the same ground as The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). In that film, Commodus was played by Christopher Plummer; Russell Crowe had worked with Plummer the previous year on The Insider (1999).
The leader's bust was in fact painted; the bare carved stone appearance in the tent and in Rome was the result of the paint flaking off over time.
The battle scenes against the Germanic tribes were shot over six weeks and took place at British Army training grounds in Aldershot. Wearing a Roman military skirt in February was literally freezing.
The warrior costumes, especially the helmets, were made from fiberglass rather than heavy metal by craftsmen in Peshawar.
Sir Ridley Scott used real live tigers in the arena fights because he preferred practical effects (real fire, smoke, explosions, animals). However, the trained 'Hollywood' tigers struggled to deliver the desired ferocity, as they often spent their time sleeping. Technicians sometimes put elastic bands around their mouths to make them bare their teeth, and motivated them with cat-friendly treats.
The German shepherd Kyte, who appears alongside Russell Crowe, is better known for the role of Wellard in the series EastEnders (1985).
The first fight in the Colosseum is called the 'Battle of Carthage' to commemorate the Romans' victory over Hannibal. Coincidentally, Sir Ridley Scott's next film was Hannibal (2001).
All scenes featuring animals were shot under strict supervision for their safety; any violence toward the animals was simulated.
Horse stunt expert Ricardo Cruz took the white horse Montero, which Russell Crowe rides, to Texas Hollywood Studios in Almeria, Spain. This horse was used as Captain Grisham's horse in the series Queen of Swords (2000), where Cruz was the horse stunt coordinator.
In preparation for shooting, Sir Ridley Scott worked on storyboards for months to develop the framework of the plot.
The film was released as the second DVD with a 6.1 DTS sound mix.
It was one of the first DVDs released with DTS sound in the United Kingdom.
In 'Gladiator II', the sequel he made nearly a quarter of a century later, Ridley Scott stated that, in a nod to the famous tiger scene, an elephant was used alongside these animals. The elephant appears in the film for a brief moment.