FILM · 2019 · USA
Knives Out
- Directed by
- Rian Johnson
- Runtime
- 131 min
- Studio
- MRC, T-Street
159 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan's dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan's untimely death.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (159)
- #001
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While shooting the big final explanation, Rian Johnson discovered that Daniel Craig had memorized the last 30 pages of the script entirely, most of which was a monologue delivered by his character. Johnson changed how he shot the scenes, favoring long takes over short cuts, because he saw that Craig's performance got progressively better the longer each take ran.
- #002
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The message Harlan leaves for Linda inside the envelope written in invisible ink (which Richard sees only as a blank sheet when he finds it) reads: "My heart, It's time to cut the wood. He is cheating on you. I have proof. I know you don't need to see it. Work it out yourself. Time's up, Dad."
- #003
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When Marta first enters Ransom's house, four or five brown glass pitchers can be seen lined up in the background. But where another pitcher could be in the row, there is an empty space. At the film's climax, in a flashback, we see Ransom use the pitcher to burn down the medical examiner's office.
- #004
Handing his empty plate to Marta as if she were a maid during the immigration conversation was Don Johnson's idea for his character.
- #005
Jacob's line "You had sex with my grandpa, you dirty anchor baby!" was improvised by Jaeden Martell, but it was initially lost in the scene because multiple characters were talking and shouting. Michael Shannon noticed this and approached Rian Johnson, telling him Martell had a very impressive line, so they made sure to go back and capture it.
- #006
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Working out the mechanism that would address and explain Marta switching the medications was the script element that frustrated Rian Johnson the longest. "I need something that will make both her and the audience seriously believe that she screwed everything up and killed him through her own mistake, but it also has to be something I can effectively take back at the end of the film." He says he went through numerous overly complicated variations before settling on the finished element.
- #007
When Ransom tells his family to "eat sh*t" during the reading of the will: the script originally had him say "F*** you." Rian Johnson decided to remove most of the "F" bombs from the script to secure an MPA PG-13 rating and to make the film more like the mystery movies he grew up watching with his family. It was Chris Evans who suggested the change to "eat sh*t."
- #008
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The steelbook of the film's Blu-ray has a transparent slipcover. Behind this cover is a series of knives arranged in a circle, each pointing in a certain direction like an arrow. The steelbook itself is printed with the film's poster showing all the characters. Like a hidden reference, when the cover is opened and placed back over the steelbook, the knives point at the culprit.
- #009
Rian Johnson said Michael Shannon was by far the funniest person on the film's set and brought out many of his character's funny lines and physical moments, such as the triumphant arm raise and his reply in the "eat shit" scene: "I am not eating one iota of shit!"
- #010
In his commentary, director Rian Johnson described Chris Evans's entrance during the reading of the will, when the barking dogs surround him, as one of the best pieces of acting he has ever seen, because "dogs love Chris Evans, and Chris Evans loves dogs."
- #011
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When Marta is first seen at the Thrombey house, she looks up from the driveway toward the house and the family members. In the final scene, the surviving members of the Thrombey family all stand at that same spot on the driveway, looking up at Marta from the balcony, beautifully showing that the roles have been reversed.
- #012
Rian Johnson considered cutting Blanc's doughnut speech, but Craig convinced him it was good. Watching the actor deliver it persuaded him to keep the whole thing, and it became fans' favorite scene.
- #013
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Harlan Thrombey asks Marta how he always beats her at Go. She answers: "You're playing to win, I'm playing to build a beautiful pattern." This beautifully foreshadows Marta's arc: while members of the Thrombey family lie, cheat and try to manipulate their way into Harlan's inheritance, Marta is the only one who constantly tries to do the right thing, even at her own expense. In the end she inherits everything, so she "wins."
- #014
Several characters reference the fictional Hallmark film "Deadly by Surprise," starring Danica McKellar. McKellar was not asked whether her name could be used, but she was very pleased by the inclusion and shared her love of the film on Instagram. She later sent director Rian Johnson a knife with "Deadly by Surprise" written on it.
- #015
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At various points in the film, members of the Thrombey family say Marta is from Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. Although Marta herself is implied to have been born in the United States (the characters only note that her mother is "an illegal"), Marta never corrects them and never reliably states where her family comes from. Since Marta's family speaks Spanish, and Brazil speaks Portuguese, Brazil cannot be entirely possible among the options given. Marta's actress, Ana de Armas, was born in Cuba.
- #016
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Harlan dies on his 85th birthday. This is a nod to Agatha Christie, who died at the age of 85. The film is a tribute to Christie's writing style and stories.
- #017
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Early on, Harlan makes a remark about people "impulsively unraveling the strings on their parachutes." This habit causes his own undoing when he hits Marta as she calls the ambulance; had he listened to her instead of giving in to his dramatic instincts, he could have saved his life.
- #018
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In some close-ups, Blanc appears to have some redness on his neck. In a deleted scene, Blanc explains to Joni that he ordered and used some of Flam's products — the lifestyle company's Snail Oil Jelly — and developed a rash. He then Googled "Flam" and "Rash" and found pages of complaints on beauty sites that Flam products cause rashes. Blanc also tells Joni that his investigation determined Flam has been failing for years.
- #019
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At one point a baseball on Harlan's desk is picked up and thrown out his office window. Around the same time, Benoit Blanc notes that "the game is afoot," referencing the old Sherlock Holmes phrase meaning the search has begun or is continuing. The baseball then passes from character to character in some way throughout the film. It represents the "game being in play," and when the mystery is finally solved the ball lands on the table, symbolizing the end of the game/search. The baseball is also a metaphor for Harlan's love of games and a final hurrah. (Note: Arthur Conan Doyle's use of "games afoot" is a quotation from Shakespeare's "Henry V," in which the named king urges his men to continue their assault on Harfleur.)
- #020
Rian Johnson told costume designer Jenny Eagan that he thought Ransom would own beautiful, expensive clothes he didn't care about. Eagan ran with this, putting holes in the sleeves of his now-iconic sweaters and even damaging the heels of the moccasins he wears throughout the film.
- #021
Joseph Gordon-Levitt voices the police detective heard in the television series that Marta's sister watches. The character is credited as Detective Hardrock. Gordon-Levitt has appeared in six films directed by Rian Johnson.
- #022
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The final look at Harlan's portrait (at 2:04:00) is set to a somewhat "leaving everything feeling okay" tone. He is now smiling.
- #023
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Harlan Thrombey foreshadows the ending when he tells Marta that his grandson Ransom's carefree lifestyle has left him unable to tell a propeller blade from a real knife. At the climax, Ransom attacks Marta with a knife he impulsively grabbed from a knife chair, only to discover it is a propeller blade.
- #024
Various artworks and window designs in the mansion feature the "memento mori" motif, depicting scenes of daily life filled with skeletons or skulls. Roughly meaning "remember you are mortal," the motif was popular in the Victorian era and was used to remind individuals that death comes to all people, rich or poor.
- #025
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When Detective Blanc and Marta first meet, Blanc looks at her shoes for a few seconds longer than usual. Near the end of the film, Marta asks Blanc when he knew she was involved in Harlan's death. He replies, "Oh, from the first moment you set foot in front of me."
- #026
M. Emmet Walsh replaced Ricky Jay, who died during production on November 24, 2018. Jay's black-and-white photograph is visible for a few seconds just before Walsh first appears on screen (55:06).
- #027
Harlan's portrait paintings change to reflect the situation, ending with a beaming smile at the satisfying outcome.
- #028
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At the 30-minute mark, they had to reshoot the scene in which Walt Thrombey smokes a cigar on the porch because the character in the window behind him was too clearly visible — it later turns out to be Marta, so they dressed Daniel Craig's stunt double in her place and darkened the image further.
- #029
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Several Thrombeys tell Marta they wanted to invite her to Harlan's funeral but were "outvoted." The first time this happens it sounds sincere and apologetic, but because it happens repeatedly and word for word, it signals that the family sees Marta as an outsider and is fully willing to be hostile toward her. Most of the Thrombeys also name a different South American country when describing Marta's roots, revealing how little they actually care about her.
- #030
The coffee mug reading "My House, My Rules, My Coffee" was produced for the film. Replicas of the mug are now available for purchase.
- #031
Some theaters showed a message before the film in which the director thanked audiences for coming and asked them not to spoil the ending for their friends.
- #032
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Near the end of the film, Linda Drysdale reads the letter her father wrote to her (in invisible ink). In her first interview with the police she mentions it: "we had our own secret way of communicating."
- #033
Joni says she is no longer on Twitter. In a deleted scene, it was confirmed that her company went bankrupt due to negative feedback, and Joni shut down her Twitter account to prevent angry customers from following her.
- #034
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When Benoit Blanc is first seen by the audience, he is sitting in the study listening to Lieutenant Elliott's questions to members of the Thrombey family. At times he presses the same piano key at seemingly random intervals. But this is no coincidence: whenever Blanc presses the piano key, Lieutenant Elliott always asks a family member the same question — "What time did you arrive at the house?" The piano key is Blanc's signal to Elliott to ask that question.
- #035
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The ransom email is sent using Proton Mail, a genuinely secure and encrypted email service that cannot be tracked.
- #036
All the clocks and phones have accurate timing. Director Rian Johnson said in an interview: "Whenever a clock or a phone is set, someone pays very close attention to the clock and asks me what time it should be in the actual scene."
- #037
In the opening shot, two dogs had to run from one trainer to another, but at first they struggled to get them close to the camera. In the end, they had to build a small ramp so the dogs wouldn't slide directly under the camera.
- #038
"I had written into the script that Blanc speaks with a subtle Southern accent," says Rian Johnson, and after everyone finished laughing he explains that Daniel Craig researched accents and admired the rhythm and charm of historian Shelby Foote. "So it's kind of a little bit of Foghorn Leghorn and also a little bit of Harlan Pepper, Christopher Guest's character in Best in Show (2000), which is funny because Christopher Guest is Jamie Lee Curtis's husband," Johnson added.
- #039
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No one in the family knows how old Great Nana is; they treat her as a living prop or burden and all but dismiss her, and she mistakes people passing by for Ransom. Although this accurately shows how selfish they are, her testimony at the end clears Marta and, following Blanc's display of kindness and respect, reveals Ransom's role in Harlan's "suicide," showing how badly the family messed up by thinking she didn't count.
- #040
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As Ransom reads the blackmail letter sent to Marta, a few indistinct issues of The New Yorker are visible on the coffee table. Early in the film, Linda and Joni refer to a New Yorker article about Blanc's career (Joni is actually referring to a tweet containing the article), and it is also implied that Ransom is the one who hired Blanc to investigate the death.
- #041
Harlan's painting was not finished until filming was complete, so every scene showing it is an effects shot.
- #042
Both the title "Knives Out" and the working title "Morning Bell" are tracks on the English rock band Radiohead's album "Amnesiac" (2001).
- #043
Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas would later work together again in the 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die (2021). This was because Craig chose Armas for her role in the second film, since they had the chemistry to work together on this film.
- #044
The rhythms in which Benoit Blanc periodically plays a piano key were originally written for Lieutenant Elliott sitting behind his chair and tapping him with his foot. However, when they arrived at the location, Rian Johnson realized the geography of the room offered him a better option with the piano.
- #045
The coin Benoit Blanc flips is a 1901 US Morgan silver dollar. Because they are 90 percent silver, the government melted down millions of them during World War I to help finance the war effort. They are very hard to find and, depending on their condition, can fetch thousands of dollars.
- #046
In an interview, Rian Johnson stated that Michael Shannon made many funny improvisations, among them "I will not eat one iota of shit!" and "Maybe Harlan left you a cold glass of milk in his will, asshole."
- #047
Chris Evans bought his dog Dodger a sweater identical to the one he wore in the film. Evans wore a white cable-knit sweater in the film, and it quickly became an internet phenomenon.
- #048
While filming the interrogation scene with Linda, special window-like lighting rigs were used so that the reflection in Jamie Lee Curtis's glasses would look like natural light seeping into the room.
- #049
While waiting in the car, Daniel Craig sings the classic song "Losing My Mind." Daniel is a huge Liza Minnelli fan and insisted on using her own version of the song, which came out of her collaboration with The Pet Shop Boys.
- #050
Rian's cousin Mark Johnson made the title credits and based the typeface on Agatha Christie's paperback series. Zack Johnson, another cousin, made the pictures of the cast for the film's final scene.
- #051
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Don Johnson's black eye at the end of the film is a visual effect added in post-production.
- #052
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Ransom says he thinks he is the only person to have beaten Harlan at Go. This triggers the final confrontation between Ransom and Marta and shows that Marta is smarter than him, tricking him into a public confession.
- #053
In the scene where Chris Evans's character Ransom Thrombey approaches the house and the dogs bark from behind the fence, the trainers walked the dogs on leashes toward the set and rehearsed them, having learned that Evans kept his toys (balls) in his jacket pocket. Later, as Evans walked toward the car in the driveway, the trainers stood a few meters away with the dogs on leashes. Evans showed the toys to the dogs from off-screen, and the dogs reacted by barking and pulling on their leashes.
- #054
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A deleted scene explains Walt's limp. He tells the detectives he was in a bicycle accident. However, after his wife Donna notices a threatening man on their front porch — a scene in the trailer but not in the film — Blanc confronts him with evidence that Walt was shot in the leg and that, although he could have been shot while riding a bike, the couple "at the very least buried the lede." Donna then confesses that Walt suffered heavy investment losses and embezzled money from Harlan's publishing company to cover them.
- #055
At least two character names appear to be a tribute to "Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?", one of the first entries in the popular 1970s and '80s children's book series "Choose Your Own Adventure": the film's late patriarch Harlan Thrombey and the elderly gardener Proofroc (Prufrock, a bumbling detective, is a secondary character in the book). Like the film, the book revolves around the death of a wealthy man whose large family are potential suspects in his death.
- #056
Following M. Emmet Walsh's death in 2024, Rian Johnson tweeted: "Emmet came to set with 2 things: a copy of his credits, which was a small-type single-spaced double-column list of modern classics that filled the entire page, and two-dollar bills which he passed out to the entire crew. 'Don't spend it and you'll never be broke.' Absolute legend."
- #057
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To secure a PG-13 rating, the filmmakers had to digitally paint over some of the blood used on set during the first reveal of Harlan Thrombey's body.
- #058
Rian Johnson acknowledges that, despite numerous edits and attempts to shrink it, the script's opening interrogation sequence (edited together with flashbacks) was "always a really tough read." He wants people to read it and adds: "I never didn't get the note that 'boy those first thirty pages are rough, and then it kicks into gear.'".
- #059
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The way the light catches the letter Harlan briefly planned to give Linda shows that the letter is not blank. Later, Linda takes a stack of letters on the same letterhead from her father's desk. All the letters show heat damage from Linda's lighter. It is later revealed that a message was left on the letter in invisible ink.
- #060
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After the film opened, Patton Oswalt contacted Rian Johnson to ask whether the needle drop of Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" at 1:21:47 was a deliberate reference. The song is apparently (probably) about a bandmate of Lightfoot's named Cathy Evelyn Smith, who is known for giving John Belushi the fatal heroin and cocaine injection in 1982. "And Patton, who is perfect in his 3D-chess thinking, said: 'Was that a crazy nod to Marta?'".
- #061
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When conducting the interviews, all members of the Thrombey family sit with the chair outside the circle of knives, toward the handle. When Marta is interviewed, however, the chair is positioned in the exact center of the knife circle, at the points of the blades. This symbolizes the Thrombey family's hostility toward Marta.
- #062
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Apple agreed to let its products be used in the film on the condition that the killer does not use any Apple product. In particular, Marta not using any Apple product further reinforces the idea that she is responsible for Harlan's death until the final reveal.
- #063
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According to Marta's cell phone and the toxicology report, the film takes place in November 2018. According to the dialogue, Harlan's birthday party was on November 8.
- #064
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At around 22:10, Richard turns the letter over (the letter Harlan wrote for his daughter Linda), and you can briefly see light passing through it, indicating that invisible ink was used to inform Linda about Richard's crimes.
- #065
Rian Johnson wonders if anyone noticed that Meg Thrombey, Katherine Langford, wears a black T-shirt showing a diagram of female anatomy at around 10:03 to 10:12. "That might have been how we kept our PG-13," he adds, referring to Noah Segan, who was cast as Trooper Wagner.
- #066
It was Toni Collette who chose the Roxy Music song "More Than This," which her character Joni Thrombey dances to early on.
- #067
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The circle of knives placed behind the chair during the opening interviews and the final screening is ring-shaped with a hole in the middle, much like Detective Blanc's metaphor for the mystery. All the knives point toward the center, showing that every character has their own "knives out" and is fighting to explore the void at the heart of the mystery.
- #068
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During the car chase scene, Ransom calls Marta "Baby Driver (2017)" because of her reckless driving. Rian Johnson decided to go the wrong way and stage a silly chase because he felt "there's no way we're going to top anything in that."
- #069
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Sharp-eyed viewers will notice a particular foreshadowing detail while watching the security footage: although he had left the party early, Ransom's car is never seen driving down the driveway.
- #070
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After the will is read, Marta leaves and the family follows her. As they begin to surround her, the camera switches from a Steadicam to a handheld camera to show how suffocated she feels, until she gets back to her car and feels safe, when it switches back to Steadicam. It turned out this was an accidental mishap during production because the Steadicam broke, but director Rian Johnson felt the shot worked because of it.
- #071
The Thrombeys take their names from 1970s rock stars: Richard and Linda are Richard Thompson and Linda Thompson, Joni is Joni Mitchell, Neil is Neil Young, and Walt and Donna are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan. The exception is Ransom, who is named after a character in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.
- #072
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In the film's final scene, as Marta sips from Harlan's mug while looking at the Thrombeys, only the words "My House" are fully visible, implying that she will keep the entire inheritance for herself. Rian Johnson explained in an interview that this was not entirely intentional. He said: "It was funny that it wasn't an accident but it kind of was an accident. A happy accident. I knew I wanted her to like drinking tea in the final shot, and the idea of 'My house, my rules, my coffee' had also come to me as the first shot in the film after the first big dramatic shot of the house, breaking the tension with a silly modern joke mug. So I said, 'Oh she can have that at the end!' Then when we were doing this close-up, she was on the balcony and I shouted, 'Sip the tea!' and she brought it into frame and those words came up and I was just like, 'Oh, that's pretty nice.'".
- #073
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In the epilogue, Linda Thrombey deciphers the message Harlan left her, exposing her husband Richard's affair, and looks at him sadly. Shortly afterward, in the last scene, Richard is seen with a black eye, implying that Linda was the one who caused it.
- #074
The board game played by Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) and Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) is called Go. Go is an abstract strategy game for two players in which the goal is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago.
- #075
Rian Johnson was asked about the moment in the film when Joni Thrombey says she first heard of Benoit Blanc in an article in The New Yorker. In the article, the investigator was reported to have solved a case involving a tennis champion. "That's a very sly reference to one of my favourite movies, which is the 1970s version of Sleuth (1972)," Johnson explained: "Originally the character Andrew, played by Laurence Olivier, was a mystery writer dictating onto a recording device the ending of his current novel, 'Death By Double-Fault,' which describes how a body is found on a tennis court."
- #076
At one point Benoit Blanc references Thomas Pynchon's sprawling 1973 novel 'Gravity's Rainbow,' which won the National Book Award and was nominated for the Pulitzer but upset the Pulitzer Advisory Board because some members found it "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten" and even "obscene," so no Pulitzer was awarded that year. Because Pynchon refused to attend the National Book Award ceremony in person, Viking Press sent a comedian in his place to accept the award, and a stand-up performer took the stage in the middle of the ceremony. Benoit adds that nobody has read the book but that he likes the title, a reference to the German V-2 rockets of World War II, and the detective compares it to the arc of a murder mystery. Benoit also mentions the Arc later in the story.
- #077
The Man Who Would Be King (1975) was one of Rian Johnson's favorite films, so between takes he tried to get Christopher Plummer talking about working with the legendary John Huston.
- #078
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As Blanc reviews certain events from the night Harlan died, Meg is shown being woken during the night by the family dogs barking. This is one of the only details that cannot be explained by Marta's return to cover up Harlan's death, since the dogs loved her enough to stay quiet as she slipped through the garden. It is later revealed that they were barking at Ransom, who was trying to sneak in to retrieve the medication bottles.
- #079
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While the will is being read, Ransom is shown grinning as he plays with a chessboard. He is the film's 'chess master,' the one who orchestrated the entire scheme to kill Harlan and frame Marta for it. Chess is also a game you can only win by playing to win. When he is in control, he can manipulate Marta effortlessly, but when Marta acts on her own, playing her own game her own way, she stays true to the beauty and benevolence of her own Go style.
- #080
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As Harlan addresses in the film, a parenteral regimen of 100 mg of ketorolac given to an 85-year-old man for weeks would be completely off-label and would carry a serious risk of kidney failure.
- #081
Every time a member of the family mentions Marta's nationality, they give a different country.
- #082
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Although, like Linda, it may or may not have been intentional, when her father Tony Curtis died in 2010, Jamie Lee Curtis and her siblings only later learned that he had changed his will a few months earlier, disinheriting all of his children and leaving his entire estate to his widow alone. However, Jamie Lee has never spoken about this publicly, so it is unknown whether she felt the same way as Linda or the other Thrombeys.
- #083
The dubbed program Marta's mother is watching is Who Put the Barbiturates in Mrs. Fletcher's Dinner? (1988), from Murder, She Wrote, which is about a dinner party that ends in murder.
- #084
The film was shot primarily on digital video using Arri Alexa cameras. Cinematographer Steve Yedlin used a post-production process he developed by comparing film and digital video to mimic the film's look, adding grain and halation effects to imitate film stock.
- #085
In one of the flashbacks, Walt fails to secure a deal with Netflix to make film adaptations of Harlan's novels. After the success of this film, Netflix acquired the sequel rights and produced Glass Onion (2022) and Wake Up Dead Man (2025).
- #086
Rian Johnson described Daniel Craig's character Benoit Blanc as an "American Poirot." Craig himself is a naturalized American despite being British. This is oddly consistent with Poirot, who is Belgian but has traditionally been portrayed by an Englishman (Albert Finney, David Suchet, Peter Ustinov, etc.) or a Northern Irishman (Kenneth Branagh). Benoit Blanc is also a plausible Belgian name.
- #087
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When Walt enters the room that was probably his childhood bedroom, Linda is looking at her letters from Harlan. If you look closely at the letters, you can see burn marks, caused by the method required to read them.
- #088
The song Benoit Blanc sings while waiting in the car is "Losing My Mind" from the Stephen Sondheim musical "Follies". Oddly enough, the show, originally titled "The Girls Upstairs", was conceived by Sondheim and playwright James Goldman as a murder mystery. Sondheim himself would later play a small role in "Glass Onion".
- #089
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In the restaurant scene, Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" plays softly in the background. Its chorus goes, "Sundown, ya better take care, if I find you creepin' 'round my back stairs," referring to the two people in that scene who use the trellis outside the house to reach the hidden door leading to the study.
- #090
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The firefighters who put out the fire at the medical office are all current or former members of the Marlborough, Massachusetts Fire Department. Paul Zompetti and Ron Ayotte are former fire chiefs, Brian Leonard is a lieutenant and Joseph Bisazza is a firefighter. Their names appear on their coats.
- #091
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According to Rian Johnson, while making this film he discovered that Apple has a rule against villains using iPhones (presumably Jacob's phone) on camera in films featuring the product, out of fear that it would damage the brand image of their products, and apparently this rule applies to any film that includes their products.
- #092
Jacob Thrombey (Jaeden Martell), the tiki grandson who is always on his phone in the film, was a character inspired by those who aired their criticisms online over writer/director Rian Johnson's previous film Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017), whom Johnson has continued to describe as "trolls" and "manbabies".
- #093
Rian's cousin Nathan Johnson composed the film's score, as he has on all of the director's films, except Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017), which he understood. It was the composer's first time using an orchestra.
- #094
Rian Johnson produces one of his own films for the first time.
- #095
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At the start of the film, shortly before she finds Harlan's body, the housekeeper is seen preparing breakfast and pouring coffee into a mug that reads "My house, my rules, my coffee". At the end of the film, Marta drinks from the same mug as members of the Thrombey family watch her, now standing on the balcony of her mansion, covering all the words except "My house" with her hands.
- #096
The most impressive digital trick is the shot at the 17:21 mark. It is an addition to a simple family photo on a shelf showing Richard Drysdale, his wife Linda and their son Ransom. It was added so that viewers could put a face to a name while the characters talk about Ransom before we meet him. It was achieved by shooting the framed photo in front of a green screen and then compositing it with one of the wide shots of the room in which the background is slightly blurred.
- #097
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Ransom forces all of the Thrombeys' employees to call him "Hugh" because he is a jerk. This points to the fact that he is just as racist and unpleasant as the rest of the family; his kindness toward Marta is merely an act.
- #098
Two scenes would have led Blanc to dig deeper into his investigation, and this would have paid off later. Walt says during his interview that he injured his leg in a bicycle accident. Blanc later visits Donna at her home and learns that the "accident" happened at midnight. Walt actually owed money to some unpleasant people. Initially Blanc develops a skin rash. He later confronts Joni with the fact that the whole Flam line has received nothing but complaints, leading him to conclude that she is truly broke.
- #099
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During the will-reading scene, as Harlan's lawyer Alan details certain aspects of Harlan's will, the camera focuses on a member of the Thrombey family and their own family. This visually tells us what they want from Harlan's will. When Alan mentions Harlan's mansion, the camera cuts to Linda and Richard, showing that they want to inherit the mansion. (This makes sense, since Linda is a real estate mogul.) When Alan mentions Harlan's vast fortune, the camera cuts to Meg and Joni, showing that they want it. (Especially since Joni needs it for her business and Meg for her college tuition.) And finally, when Alan mentions the publishing company, the camera focuses on Walt and his family, showing that Walt wants to run the company again despite his father firing him.
- #100
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In the bar scene, after Marta tells Ransom the story from her point of view, three beer bottles with green labels can be seen on Ransom's side of the table, and one with a red label on Marta's side, a nod to the atari position in the game of Go, a recurring theme in the film. In Go, atari is a situation in which a player's stones are surrounded by the opponent's so that only one escape is possible, effectively putting them in an advantageous position for the next move. Had Ransom turned Marta over to the authorities, the rest of the family would have received all the fortune left to her in the will and Ransom would have gotten nothing. By acting as her savior in the predicament she is in (in exchange for a cut of the fortune he otherwise would not see a penny of), he deliberately rescues her from an atari position, which is a suspicious move coming from an "expert" Go player and a harbinger of his ill intent. Moreover, leaving an atari position is rarely a bad move, and in the end it proves that Marta is, as Harlan claimed, actually a "better Go player than Ransom".
- #101
Although it is never explained where the Cabrera family emigrated from, Ana de Armas (Marta) and Marlene Forte (Marta's mother) were both born in Cuba.
- #102
They recorded the commentary a week after the film opened in theaters, and Rian Johnson was very excited that Chris Evans's white sweater had become a topic of public conversation.
- #103
The opening scenes show several of Harlan Thrombey's books. Two covers displayed side by side on a table are "This Little Piggie" and "The Needle Game", which foreshadow the purpose and method of the murder plot. Other books include "The Wrong Tree", "Nick of Time", "The Badger", "The Keeper", "Ultimatum" and "Homunculus", all of which relate to plot elements or characters. There is also "A Drop in the Bucket", which foreshadows the reaction Marta will have when she lies.
- #104
Contains a major spoiler — show
Two clues that Ransom is the one who hired Benoit Blanc: during dinner with Marta, he says he knows from "that mafia game last fall" that she tends to vomit when she lies. Whoever hired Benoit also told him that Marta throws up when she lies. Also, when Marta visits him there, a copy of The New Yorker is visible in Ransom's house, revealing how Ransom learned who Benoit was in order to hire him. In their first interviews with Blanc, the other members of the family mention his New Yorker profile.
- #105
When the news crews gather in front of Marta's house, a clip is shown on television of a reporter broadcasting from outside the house. The reporter is a local New England sports talk-show host.
- #106
Butch McCarthy, the film's key green man, came up with the Menagerie Tragedy Trilogy on the day of shooting after Rian Johnson asked the cast and crew for suggestions.
- #107
In the shot immediately before Marta picks up the coffee mug (2:04:33), the writing on the mug was originally visible. It was later discovered that the film's final shot did not have the same effect once the script had leaked beforehand. As a result, the hand was digitally moved in post-production to hide the writing on the mug.
- #108
The restaurant Marta and Ransom go to was called The Flat Penny and was located in Berlin, Massachusetts. Shortly after the scene was shot, it was renamed On the Trax after coming under new management, and it was later closed due to the owner's embezzlement activities at the time. It will soon become a Mexican restaurant called Maria's.
- #109
Contains a major spoiler — show
It emerged that the mansion was purchased in the 1980s. The keystone of the arched balcony door above the entrance bears the monogram of the letter I over the letter T, meaning the house was commissioned by someone with the initials T. I. Clearly this was not the ancestral home of the Thrombeys.
- #110
In a deleted scene, the loan shark threatening Donna wears a coat just like Blanc's, while in the next scene, when Blanc comes to his house, he is without that coat in one of the film's only such moments. This implies the man was sent by Blanc, Elliot and Wagner to give them a moment of staged heroics and to make Donna more willing to talk to them about the loan Walt took out. Of course, the "loan shark" reappears as one of the police officers in the final scene.
- #111
Rian Johnson was happy to reference Stephen Sondheim by having Blanc sing a song from "Follies" in the car. The legendary musical theatre composer, (for New York magazine) puzzle creator and mystery fan wrote two produced works: The Last of Sheila (1973), written with Anthony Perkins, and the comedy mystery play "Getting Away With Murder", written with George Furth. The character Laurence Olivier played in Sleuth is based on Stephen Sondheim.
- #112
Contains a major spoiler — show
A will can only be "probated" after a person dies. Probate is the process of proving a will, and in many states there is a set period (for example, 3 days, 10 days) that must pass after a person dies before the deceased's will can be admitted to probate. A person cannot choose to have their own will probated before they die, so Harlan's statement that he chose not to have the new will probated is incorrect.
- #113
Rian Johnson met Noah Segan (Trooper Wagner) on their first film, Brick (2005), and they remained friends and colleagues. "I finally wrote you a role that gets to the soul of Noah Segan."
- #114
Throughout the film the family has two pet dogs, and the dogs are seen performing light actions such as sitting/standing/lying down, being held or petted, and walking/running on or off leash. For all these scenes, the trainers used hand signals and verbal commands to cue the light action the trained dogs were used to performing. Barking/growling was also a trained behavior.
- #115
Marta walks past a car with a "Keep calm and Bergeron" bumper sticker, a reference to longtime Boston Bruin hockey player Patrice Bergeron.
- #116
Contains a major spoiler — show
Marta said she throws up when she thinks about lying, and she does so early in the film. When Blanc interrogates her she does not vomit immediately, but at (0:44:45) you can hear her stomach.
- #117
It reunites Frank Oz and Jamie Lee Curtis 36 years after they appeared in Trading Places (1983).
- #118
Marta's mother is watching Murder, She Wrote: Who Threw the Barbitals in Mrs. Fletcher's Chowder? (1988), dubbed into Spanish. The dubbing of Angela Lansbury was done by Beatriz Aguirre, a respected television, film and dubbing master who died about two months before the film's release.
- #119
The sailor figure at the foot of Harlan's staircase resembles the Jolly Jack Tarr sailor in the home of mystery writer Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) in Sleuth (1972).
- #120
The film secured $40 million USD in funding at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2018.
- #121
Contains a major spoiler — show
The blackmail letter being torn from the bottom is extremely easy to overlook when Marta opens the letter, but it becomes highly relevant during the reveal.
- #122
This is Rian Johnson's second film shot partly digitally. Johnson's cinematographer Steve Yedlin explained in a technology demo that half of Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) was also shot on film and half digitally.
- #123
According to Dr. Jackson Vane of the Hello Everyone! Bad Medicine Podcast (2019), Knives Out is "140% medically accurate." This means the film was considered 40% more sound than The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009), which markets itself as "100% medically accurate" and was used as a baseline for comparison.
- #124
Benoit Blanc says the film's title when he says, "You're a pack of vultures at the feast. Knives out, beaks bloody."
- #125
Contains a major spoiler — show
Knives Out contains at least two Sherlock Holmes references: the use of the phrase "the game is afoot" and Marta being referred to as a Watson. Christopher Plummer played Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979) and also spoke the line "The game's afoot" as Klingon General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). (Arthur Conan Doyle himself was quoting Shakespeare's Henry V when he had the king encourage his men to continue attacking Harfleur.) There are at least two more: when Plummer's character tells Marta that the dogs will do nothing (not bark) when she returns because they know her, this hints at the famous exchange between Holmes and the inspector in Silver Blaze (the key clue that reveals the true culprit): "There is also the curious incident of the dog in the night time" / "But the dog did nothing in the night time" / "That is the curious incident." The footprints in the mud may also be a reference to the legendary footprint analysis seen in many Holmes stories.
- #126
The BMW Ransom drives is a 1972 BMW 3.0 CSi. The model is referred to as the e9 by BMW and BMW enthusiasts.
- #127
In January 2019, Rian Johnson tweeted a series of photos of the posters he hung in the studio while editing Knives Out to serve as inspiration for the film's cut. These were posters for: Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun (1982; starring Peter Ustinov, Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith); Murder by Death (1976; starring Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven and Peter Sellers); Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1978; starring Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Angela Lansbury); The Last of Sheila (1973; starring Dyan Cannon, James Mason and Raquel Welch); Deathtrap (1982; starring Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve and Dyan Cannon); Clue (1985; starring Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn and Martin Mull); Gosford Park (2001; starring Maggie Smith, Ryan Phillippe, Michael Gambon and Kristin Scott Thomas); Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd (1980; starring Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Lansbury, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Kim Novak); the London production of the stage musical Something's Afoot (1977; starring Sally Smith); Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974; starring Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman); The Private Eyes (1980; Tim Conway and Don Knotts); and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019; starring Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton). All of them are murder mysteries and/or detective stories, though some are satires of the genre. The screenplay for The Last of Sheila (1973) was written by Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (with Anthony Perkins), who also wrote the song "Losing My Mind," a portion of which Benoit Blanc sings in a scene in this film. The Last of Sheila was Sondheim's only film screenplay.
- #128
The painting concealing the fake wall door that opens onto the window through which Marta enters the corridor leading to Thrombey's room is Pere Borrell del Caso's 1874 trompe l'oeil painting "Escaping Criticism."
- #129
The piano key Benoit Blanc keeps striking is F.
- #130
At one point Chris Evans's character refers to Daniel Craig's character as "CSI: KFC." Similarly, in Craig's film Logan Lucky (2017), a news anchor refers to the group of thieves as "Ocean's 7-11."
- #131
The cast includes two Oscar winners, Christopher Plummer and Jamie Lee Curtis, and four Oscar nominees: Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield and Ana de Armas.
- #132
The blue arrow from Rian Johnson's Brick (2005) appears during the car chase.
- #133
Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' is the first book Rian Johnson gave to Noah Segan, who had not yet read it.
- #134
This is the second film in which Michael Shannon plays Jaeden Martell's father, the first being Midnight Special (2016).
- #135
Contains a major spoiler — show
Marta mishears Fran's dying words as "You did this." It is later revealed that Fran actually said "Hugh did this," accusing Ransom. Almost the same mishearing is used in the Jack Reacher novel "Nothing to Lose" by Lee Child, in which Jack Reacher mishears a dying man's last words as "You did this to me" when he actually says "The U [i.e. Uranium] did this to me."
- #136
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the scene where Meg calls Marta and tries to persuade her to give up the inheritance, when Marta refuses and Meg hangs up, a line from Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" is heard: "When it feels like I'm winning when I'm losing again." This is doubly meaningful. First, it correlates directly with the conversation in which Meg fails to "win" the return of Marta's inheritance, and second, it relates to an unheard line of the song: "You better take care, if I find you've been creeping round my back stairs." Harlan Thrombey's death and its cover-up were directly connected to Marta going down the back stairs disguised as Harlan.
- #137
This is the second consecutive Rian Johnson film featuring Frank Oz, after Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017).
- #138
Marta Cabrera's apartment was filmed in a building that was once a haunt of the young James 'Whitey' Bulger.
- #139
Rian Johnson cited Columbo (1971) as an influence on this film.
- #140
This is Rian Johnson's first mystery film since Brick (2005).
- #141
Contains a major spoiler — show
As Fran dies, Marta hears her say "You did this." In the final explanation, the audience learns that she said "Hugh did this." However, the subtitles in the released version show her saying "You did this." This would be accurate in terms of what Marta heard and interpreted.
- #142
Contains a major spoiler — show
Katherine Langford shot a scene as an older version of Morgan Stark for Chris Evans's previous film Avengers: Endgame (2019). The scene was cut and released only through the Disney+ streaming service.
- #143
Both Ana de Armas and M. Emmet Walsh appeared in the Blade Runner series, albeit 35 years apart. M. Emmet Walsh was Captain Bryant in the original Blade Runner (1982), and de Armas was Joi in the sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
- #144
It is Chris Evans's highest-grossing film outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- #145
The bearded baby is the same one used in Sleuth.
- #146
In the slow-motion scene where the dogs run away from the mansion, the trainer held both dogs by their leashes at their marks at the edge of the estate's driveway. Another trainer stood at the end point for the dogs across the lawn. During the action, the other trainer stood up and waved his arm to get the dogs' attention. The first trainer then gave the command "Go to." and released the dogs. The dogs ran to the other trainer, who had placed two bowls of dry food pieces for them as a reward.
- #147
Due to limited resources, the American Humane Association did not monitor some of the dogs' actions.
- #148
Benoit Blanc's first name is probably a reference to the mathematician Benoît B. Mandelbrot, after whom complex fractal diagrams of infinite complexity are named.
- #149
Contains a major spoiler — show
The type of phone a character uses gives clues about their guilt or innocence.
- #150
Contains a major spoiler — show
The film is close in sound to the British band The Rolling Stones, who play American music, just as lead actor Daniel Craig is a Brit playing an American character. The song "Sweet Virginia" contains the line "got to scrape that shit right off your shoe," which may also be a nod to the blood that splatters onto Marta's sneaker.
- #151
Jamie Lee Curtis and M. Emmet Walsh also played neighbors in Christmas with the Kranks (2004). In this film they do not spend time together on screen.
- #152
Contains a major spoiler — show
It is Chris Evans's first film in which he plays the villain since Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010).
- #153
It is Christopher Plummer's highest-rated film of the last decade of his acting career before his sad death in 2021.
- #154
M. Emmet Walsh also played a security guard as Martin Crane's grumpy boss in the Frasier (1993) episode Bully for Martin (2001).
- #155
In the film Harlan celebrates his 85th birthday. Christopher Plummer was actually 90 when it was released. Sadly, he passed away 2 years later.
- #156
Daniel Craig, who is British, plays an American detective from the Southern states.
- #157
It is Chris Evans's 10th film to gross over 100 million dollars domestically (or his 12th if his cameos in Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) are counted).
- #158
This is Cinema Tools' favorite non-James Bond Daniel Craig film.
- #159
Contains a major spoiler — show
During the reading of the will, the 'Killer Rule' is mentioned, under which the heir of the will loses their inheritance even if they are found guilty in a court of law. 'Like OJ?' Don Johnson's character says. There is later an OJ-style slow-speed car chase on the highway set up to pay this off.
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