FILM · 2014 · USA
The Imitation Game
- Directed by
- Morten Tyldum
- Runtime
- 113 min
- Studio
- Bristol Automotive, Black Bear Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment
92 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.
92 Interesting Facts About The Imitation Game
Interesting Facts (38)
- #001
On 27 November 2014, before the film opened in the United States, The New York Times reprinted The Daily Telegraph's original 1942 puzzle, which had been used to recruit codebreakers to Bletchley Park during World War II. Participants who solved it could mail in their results for a chance to win a two-person trip to London and a tour of the famous Bletchley Park facility.
- #002
Benedict Cumberbatch admitted that in one of the film's final scenes he could not stop crying and had a breakdown. As he himself put it, "To be an actor or a person who incredibly likes the character and thinks about how much he suffered and how that affected him."
- #003
Commander Dennison says he has only "rejected one of our great nation's top linguists, knows German better than Bertolt Brecht." This linguist is probably J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who learned German from his mother. In January 1939 Tolkien was asked whether he would be willing to work in the Foreign Office's cryptography department in a national emergency. He agreed and apparently attended a four-day training course at the Foreign Office from 27 March. In October 1939 he was told his services would not be needed and he never worked as a cryptographer.
- #004
The 'bomb' machine seen in the film is based on a replica of Alan Turing's original machine held at the museum at Bletchley Park. However, production designer Maria Djurkovic admitted it was made somewhat more cinematic by enlarging it and making more of its internal mechanisms visible. It is neither a Turing Machine, the thought experiment that was the subject of his 1937 paper "On Computable Numbers," nor a computer. The 'bombs' were not physically built by Turing, but were housed in huts 11 and 11A at Bletchley Park. They ran at twenty "clicks" per second, not the much slower rate shown in the film.
- #005
Although their last initials match, Mark Strong's character Stewart Menzies is not the direct basis for "M," the boss of James Bond in Ian Fleming's novels (and therefore not the abbreviation of Menzies). Menzies and Fleming both worked in the secret service during World War II, and Fleming was undoubtedly familiar with the man who ran MI6. However, Fleming worked in Britain's Naval Intelligence Division and based most of M's character on his superior there, Rear Admiral John Godfrey. The practice of intelligence chiefs being known by their last initials goes back much further: the head of the Secret Service Bureau (the precursor of MI5 and MI6), William Melville, was already referred to in government circles as "M," and one of Menzies's predecessors, Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, always signed documents with a single "C" (for "chief"). This started a tradition, with Maxwell Knight, head of MI5 and well known to Fleming, signing his memos as "M."
- #006
Contains a major spoiler — show
In 1951, when the police first arrive at Alan Turing's burgled flat, Turing is scraping up the powdered cyanide that was spilled on the floor as a result of the break-in. He also wears a scarf over his face as a mask to protect himself from breathing in the powder. This may be a nod to the theory that emerged in the 2010s that Turing's death was not suicide but resulted from accidentally inhaling cyanide, one of the chemicals he used every day.
- #007
The blue pinstripe suit Mark Strong wears throughout the film is an original suit from the 1940s. It was chosen to distinguish his character from his tweed-wearing subordinates at Bletchley Park and to give him the look of a mafia boss.
- #008
At the film's European premiere at the London Film Festival in October 2014, Cumberbatch said: "If any young person has ever felt like they weren't quite sure who they were, or weren't allowed to express themselves the way they wanted to, or were bullied for what they felt was the normal majority or anything that made them feel like an outsider, then this is absolutely a film for them because it's about a hero for them."
- #009
Benedict Cumberbatch and Alan Turing are in fact relatives in real life. According to the family history site Ancestry.com, the two are 17th cousins whose family relationship dates back to the 14th century. Both are said to be related to John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, through the paternal line of Cumberbatch and Turing.
- #010
The scenes in which Turing waits overnight for the machine to stop computing may be a reference to his earlier work on the "Halting Problem." In 1936, Turing proved that there is no universal way, other than running it, for a computer to determine whether a given program will halt or continue forever.
- #011
The film went into general release in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2014. On the same day in 1940, Coventry was attacked by the Luftwaffe. It had long been said that the attack plans were discovered by the Bletchley Park codebreakers but that no measures were taken to stop it because the British Government feared such an action would reveal that the Enigma code had already been broken. The idea that the British knew of the attack on Coventry is false. They knew an attack was expected but did not know where it would take place. The claim that Churchill deliberately withheld information so the Germans would not know their codes had been broken is false.
- #012
Benedict Cumberbatch chose to wear false teeth to portray Turing. No one else asked him to do so.
- #013
Joyce Grove, used as Bletchley Park in the film, was the childhood home of James Bond author Ian Fleming.
- #014
Helen's remark to Turing that the German radio operator (supposedly) used his girlfriend's name in every message was not an isolated occurrence. This breach of operational procedure was widespread, as many radio operators used the same 5 letters (often the names of their girlfriends or mothers) either out of laziness or out of love for the person whose name they used.
- #015
Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing shows him struggling to socialize, claiming he is on the autism spectrum and does not know what a joke is. (Alex Lawther's portrayal of the young Alan goes even further.) Yet although Turing was undeniably eccentric and preferred to work alone, friends described him as funny, warm and attractive. Children liked him too.
- #016
Contains a major spoiler — show
In an interview with GQ, Matthew Goode said the film focuses on "Turing's life and how, as a nation, we celebrated him as being a hero by chemically castrating him because he was gay."
- #017
The bombe machine recreated by the producers has been on display in a dedicated "The Imitation Game" exhibition at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom since November 10, 2014. The year-long exhibition also features the costumes worn by the actors and the props used in the film.
- #018
Production designer Maria Djurkovic intended the wallpaper in Alan Turing's home to be codes made up of dots and dashes. "It's very subtle, but she's trying to define him," says director Morten Tyldum.
- #019
Alexandre Desplat composed the film's score in only two and a half weeks. He recorded the soundtrack with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios and did the orchestration himself.
- #020
To promote the film, Benedict Cumberbatch appeared on the cover of TIME for the second time, this time for the magazine's "The Genius Issue." The cover also featured one of the last Enigma machines remaining in the United States, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
- #021
This is Norwegian director Morten Tyldum's first English-language film.
- #022
The scenes of Turing's childhood at boarding school clearly show that he is somewhere on the autism spectrum. Separating his peas from his carrots is one indicator, and the panic he feels when the other boys throw scraps at his head and plate is a second. A third is making jokes and being unable to understand them. A fourth indicator is his inability to socialize comfortably. There are probably other signs throughout the film consistent with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, when the film was released, any claim that Turing was autistic in any way was strongly rejected.
- #023
TIME magazine's chief film critic, Richard Corliss, titled his review of the film "Dancing with Doctor Strange" a month before it was officially announced that Benedict Cumberbatch would play the Marvel superhero in Doctor Strange (2016). Corliss also called Cumberbatch's performance as Turing "the actor's oddest, fullest, most Cumberbatchian character yet."
- #024
A montage of German newsreel footage shows a brief clip of a tall man in civilian clothes with his arms akimbo. This is Wernher von Braun, the world's greatest rocket scientist. His designs include the V-2 ballistic missile used by Germany during World War II and the Saturn V rocket used by NASA for its Apollo moon missions.
- #025
A scene depicting the London Blitz had to be shot on a Sunday because of London's restricted road closure laws, which regulate film production in the United Kingdom. The art department had to scramble to find rubble at the last minute because they realized no one had ordered any.
- #026
Benedict Cumberbatch played another famous British scientist, Stephen Hawking, in the BBC drama Hawking (2004).
- #027
Google, which also sponsored the film's New York premiere, launched a contest called "The Code-Cracking Challenge" on November 23, 2014. It was a skills competition in which participants had to crack a code provided by Google. Prizes were awarded to the participants who cracked the code and submitted their entries the fastest.
- #028
At the beginning of the film, as Turing travels to Bletchley, a clip is heard of then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's radio speech declaring war on Germany, as well as a clip of King George VI's radio speech also declaring war. Both speeches appeared in The King's Speech (2010), and Alexandre Desplat composed the score for both.
- #029
Matthew Beard, who plays Peter Hilton, described the Hut 8 team as "The Avengers in Tweed."
- #030
Some of the clothes Alan wears feature linear geometric patterns, hinting at his future work in computer science.
- #031
Although Bletchley Park's exterior shots were filmed at Joyce Grove, most of the interior filming belonged to the original building, including the bar where various scenes were shot. Many of the rooms used for the film (including the bar) were kept unchanged after filming ended and can be visited in the main house.
- #032
At various points in the film, period-correct pre-war BS 546 electrical sockets (round pins) are shown. In 1947, modern BS 1363 rectangular-blade sockets and plugs were introduced for all reconstruction and new construction.
- #033
Catherine, Princess of Wales's grandmother worked at Bletchley Park, just like Alan Turing and the codebreaking team.
- #034
Before playing Alan Turing in this film, Benedict Cumberbatch also played Peter Guillam in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). Both characters work in top-secret government offices while trying to hide their homosexual private lives from their superiors.
- #035
In 2020, the official history of the UK spy agency GCHQ said that Bletchley Park's contribution to World War II is generally exaggerated by the British public.
- #036
Despite receiving second billing, Keira Knightley's character, Joan Clarke, does not appear until roughly half an hour into the film.
- #037
In 2021, Turing's nephew said that his contribution to the Allies' victory in World War II had been greatly exaggerated.
- #038
The Imitation Game is one of two spy films the actress Keira Knightley appeared in during 2014; the other is Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014).
Production Story (41)
- #039
Turing's surviving niece, Inagh Payne, while conceding that Benedict Cumberbatch's casting as Alan Turing was very apt, objected to Keira Knightley's casting as Joan Clarke, noting that the real Joan was "rather plain."
- #040
Alan Turing is shown running in several scenes. The film never mentions it, but he was a world-class distance runner. In 1946 he ran a marathon in 2:46:03.
- #041
On November 27, 2014, before the film opened in the United States, The New York Times reprinted The Daily Telegraph's original 1942 puzzle, which had been used to recruit codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II. Participants who solved the puzzle could mail in their results for a chance to win a two-person trip to London and a tour of the famous Bletchley Park facilities.
- #042
The film alludes to Alan Turing's suicide. When the police first visit his house, Turing was collecting cyanide powder (it was cyanide that poisoned Turing), and also when Turing bought his friends an apple each so they could be friends (when Turing's body was found, a half-eaten apple was found beside his bed, and although the apple was never tested, it was presumed that this was the method Turing used to administer the cyanide).
- #043
Benedict Cumberbatch admitted that in one of the film's final scenes he could not stop crying and had a breakdown. As he himself put it, "Being an actor or a person who incredibly likes the character and thinks about how much he suffered and how that affected him."
- #044
Commander Dennison says he has only "rejected one of our great nation's top linguists, knows German better than Bertolt Brecht." This linguist is probably J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who learned German from his mother. In January 1939 Tolkien was asked whether he would be willing to work in the Foreign Office's cryptography department in a national emergency. He accepted and apparently attended a four-day training course at the Foreign Office from March 27. In October 1939 he was told that his services would not be needed and he never worked as a cryptographer.
- #045
The 'bomb' machine seen in the film, 'Christopher', is based on a replica of Alan Turing's original machine held at the museum at Bletchley Park. However, production designer Maria Djurkovic admitted that it was made somewhat more cinematic by enlarging it and making more of its internal mechanisms visible. It is neither a Turing Machine, a thought experiment that was the subject of his 1937 paper "On Computable Numbers," nor a computer. The 'bombs' were not physically built by Turing, but were housed in huts 11 and 11A at Bletchley Park. They ran at a rate of twenty "clicks" per second; this was not the much slower rate seen in the film.
- #046
Alex Lawther, who plays the young Turing, and Benedict Cumberbatch wore dentures in the film that were exact replicas of Alan Turing's 60-year-old false teeth.
- #047
Despite earlier reservations, Turing's niece Inagh Payne told Allan Beswick on BBC Radio Manchester that "the film really did honour my uncle," after Payne saw the film at the London Film Festival in October 2014. In the same interview, Turing's nephew Dermont Turing stated that Benedict Cumberbatch was "perfect casting. I couldn't think of anyone better." The codebreaker's great-nephew James Turing said Cumberbatch "knows things that I never knew before. The amount of knowledge he has about Alan is amazing."
- #048
Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard) falls out with Alan Turing in a serious way because of the effect his actions could have on Hilton's brother, who is on active service. In the documentary about Bletchley Park, Station X (1999) (broadcast on PBS as Decoding Nazi Secrets (1999)), the real Peter Hilton (by then a mathematics professor) offers this tribute to Alan Turing: "Alan Turing… was a genius… and there are all the differences between a very intelligent person and a genius. With very intelligent people… an idea comes up and you say to yourself: 'I could have had that idea.' You never had that feeling with Turing. He constantly surprised you with the originality of his thought; it was magnificent."
- #049
At the time, 'computer' was the name or title given to a person who was very good at working with numbers or 'computing' them. Turing calls his invention a 'digital computer', meaning that it is a machine that works like a human computer.
- #050
Joan's friend Helen mentions that an Enigma operator used his girlfriend Cilly's name as the first word of every message he sent. The Bletchley team used the term "cilly" to refer to any predictable element of a message encrypted by the Enigma Machine. This predictability helped the codebreakers break the Enigma code.
- #051
Joan and Alan are sitting on the grass and Joan says "… but Euler's Theorem gives you that immediately", and there is a very brief shot of some mathematics in a notebook. The notebook contains equations involving prime numbers and modular arithmetic, which in later years would become the basis of the public-key encryption system that keeps everyone's personal information safe on the Internet. This is, of course, not an anachronistic "invention" of the RSA algorithm in 1941, but rather a clever joke by the filmmakers.
- #052
In 1952, when the police first arrive at Alan Turing's burgled flat, Turing is scraping off the floor the powdered cyanide that spilled when the break-in occurred. He is also wearing a scarf over his face as a mask to protect himself from inhaling the powder. This may be a nod to the theory that emerged in the 2010s that Turing's death was not suicide but the result of accidentally inhaling cyanide, which was among the chemicals he used every day.
- #053
The blue pinstripe suit Mark Strong wears throughout the film is an original suit from the 1940s. It was chosen to set his character apart from his tweed-clad subordinates at Bletchley Park and to give him the look of a mafia boss.
- #054
At the film's European Premiere at the London Film Festival in October 2014, Cumberbatch said: "If any young person has felt that they are not quite sure of who they are, or has not been allowed to express themselves the way they want to, has been bullied by whatever it is they feel is the normal majority or anything that makes them feel alien, then this is absolutely a film for them because it is about a hero for them."
- #055
The scenes of young Alan's school days were shot at Sherborne School, where Alan was educated between 1926 and 1931. Many of the extras playing schoolboys were pupils at Sherborne School at the time of filming.
- #056
Framed tortoise shells can be seen hanging on the walls of Turing's house. This is a nod to his later work showing that the patterns on tortoise shells, despite their apparent complexity (and beauty), can arise from a fairly simple set of rules or instructions, that is, from an underlying genetic code. This convinced Turing that extremely complex biological entities could arise from simple programs, that is, from simple changes in DNA. This insight has profound implications for evolution, particularly for arguments that the complexity of life cannot have arisen by chance alone.
- #057
The New York Times noted a parental warning for "advanced mathematics" in its review of the film. The full notice reads: "'The Imitation Game' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Illicit sex, terrifying violence and advanced mathematics; most of it is mentioned rather than shown."
- #058
The scenes in which Turing waits overnight for the machine to stop calculating may be a reference to his earlier work on the "Halting Problem." In 1936, Turing proved that there is no universal way for a computer to determine whether a given program will halt or continue forever other than by running it.
- #059
This is Graham Moore's first screenplay. He had wanted to write a film about Alan Turing since he was 14, seeing himself as a "sort of computer science geek" who went to space and programming camps.
- #060
Numerous articles and books have been written about the breaking of the Enigma code; however, the role played by Polish cryptologists in this was often neglected in earlier works. One example of this came in 1974, when F. W. Winterbotham published a book titled "The Ultra Secret," in which he claimed that the British were the first to break the cipher. That distinction actually belongs to the Poles, who achieved this feat even though it was on an older version of Enigma than the one used in World War II in the 1930s. Their efforts, the knowledge they passed on from their work in breaking the code, and the later efforts of Turing and the British are described in detail, for example, in Simon Singh's 1999 "The Code Book." While Britain was still using linguists to break codes before World War II, the Poles had understood that using mathematics to look for patterns was necessary. They then took it a step further by building electro-mechanical machines to search for a solution (known perhaps as "bombas" because of the ticking sound they made). These devices simulated the operation of an Enigma machine and allowed operators to search for the settings of the Enigma that encoded the message by cycling through possible settings. This worked until the Germans increased the machine's complexity.
- #061
The film went into general release in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2014. On the same day in 1940, Coventry was attacked by the Luftwaffe. It has long been said that the attack plans were discovered by the Bletchley Park codebreakers but that no measures were taken to stop it because the British Government feared that such an action would reveal the fact that the Enigma code had already been broken. The idea that the British knew about the attack on Coventry is false. They knew an attack was expected but did not know where it would take place. The claim that Churchill deliberately withheld information so that the Germans would not know their codes had been broken is false.
- #062
Turing's nephew Dermot, the author of "Reflections of Alan Turing" and other books about his uncle, said that mythologizing had been done about the mathematician's role at Bletchley. He said that it was the Polish codebreakers who laid the foundation for breaking the German machine and that, unlike what is shown in the film, his uncle's creation of the Bombe was "in the hands of engineers by 1939 and delivered to Bletchley Park in 1940." He said: "It didn't work very well, but there was an improved version during the Battle of Britain. Turing's main work at Bletchley Park had been done by 1939, before Britain really entered the war."
- #063
Turing's surviving niece, Inagh Payne, while acknowledging that it was very fitting for Benedict Cumberbatch to be cast as Alan Turing, objected to Keira Knightley being cast as Joan Clarke, noting that the real Joan was "rather plain."
- #064
Benedict Cumberbatch wore false teeth of his own accord to portray Turing. No one else asked him to do so.
- #065
Helen's remark to Turing that the German radio operator (supposedly) used his girlfriend's name in every message was not an isolated case. Because many radio operators used the same five letters (most often the names of their girlfriends or mothers), either out of laziness or out of love for the person whose name they used, this breach of operating procedure was widespread.
- #066
Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing shows him struggling to socialize, claiming he is on the autism spectrum and does not know what a joke is. (Alex Lawther's portrayal of the young Alan is even more so.) Yet although Turing was undeniably eccentric and preferred to work alone, his friends described him as funny, warm and attractive. Children liked him too.
- #067
Early in the film, Detective Nock mentions Burgess and Maclean in connection with Turing's suspicious behavior. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean were members of the notorious "Cambridge Four" spy ring, which also included Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. As is also implied in the film, John Cairncross is regarded by many as the group's supposed "Fifth Man."
- #068
The bombe machine recreated by the producers has been on display since November 10, 2014 in a special "The Imitation Game" exhibition at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom. The year-long exhibition also features the costumes worn by the actors and the props used in the film.
- #069
In A Scandal in Belgravia (2012), Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock refers to the rumor that the British codebreakers had cracked the German encryption but could not prevent the attack on Coventry for fear that the fact the code had been broken would be revealed. Sherlock says he doubts this is true. These events also occur in the film, but instead of Coventry an attack on passenger ships is expected.
- #070
At the National Cryptologic Museum next to the NSA headquarters in Maryland, there is a U.S. Navy Bombe used to break the 4-rotor Enigma, as well as a working Enigma machine that visitors can access. There are seven machines on display, including Heer, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine versions. Two of them are connected to each other so that visitors can send and receive encrypted messages.
- #071
The scenes of Turing's childhood at boarding school clearly show that he is somewhere on the Autism Spectrum. Separating his peas from his carrots is one indicator, and the panic he experiences when the other children throw scraps at his head and onto his plate is a second. The third is making jokes and being unable to understand them. The fourth indicator is his inability to socialize comfortably. There are probably other signs throughout the film consistent with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, when the film was released, any claim that Turing was autistic in any way was strongly rejected.
- #072
TIME magazine's chief film critic Richard Corliss titled his review of the film "Dancing with Doctor Strange" a month before it was officially announced that Benedict Cumberbatch would play the Marvel superhero in Doctor Strange (2016). Corliss also called Cumberbatch's performance as Turing "the actor's oddest, fullest, most Cumberbatchian character yet."
- #073
A scene depicting the London Blitz had to be shot on a Sunday because of London's restricted road closure laws, which govern film production in the United Kingdom. The art department had to scramble to find rubble at the last minute because they realized no one had ordered any.
- #074
At the start of the film, as Turing travels to Bletchley, a clip of then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's radio speech announcing war with Germany is heard, along with a clip of King George VI's radio speech, which also announced the war. Both speeches appeared in The King's Speech (2010), and Alexandre Desplat composed the score for both.
- #075
If you search for "Bletchley Park" on Google when the results page appears, the letters of Bletchley Park are scrambled in code before finally being unscrambled.
- #076
Stewart Menzies was not the inspiration for James Bond's superior 'M', and Ian Fleming had several different stories about how the name came about. The first head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6) was Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, KCMG CB, or Mansfield Cumming. When reviewing and approving documents, he usually marked them with only a green "C", short for "Chief" (of the Secret Intelligence Service). Fleming, who worked for British Naval Intelligence during World War II, wrote the Bond books as fiction in order to get around restrictions on writing about the wartime activities of the security services, but he based his books on real events and characters as much as possible. Because he could not give the head of British intelligence the name "C", he used Cumming's other initial, "M", instead. The name could also have come from several other intelligence chiefs who bore the name M. However, Fleming's biographer John Pearson claimed that M's stern and demanding behaviour was based on Fleming's equally strict mother, whom he often called 'M'.
- #077
Principal photography was completed on 11 November 2013, which fell on Remembrance Day.
- #078
The film was based on the efforts of first-time producers Ido Ostrowsky and Nora Grossman, who had previously worked at television networks and were stuck between jobs, before the rights to Andrew Hodges's biography were acquired.
- #079
Christopher St began in 1799. It was an important part of gay protests, particularly during the stonewall riots. Alan Turing named his computer Christopher, but this was probably dedicated to his childhood friend.
Behind the Scenes (1)
- #080
The scenes of young Alan during his school days were shot at Sherborne School, where Alan studied between 1926 and 1931. Most of the extras playing the schoolboys were students at Sherborne School at the time of filming.
Characters & Cast (1)
- #081
Despite earlier reservations, Turing's niece Inagh Payne told Allan Beswick on BBC Radio Manchester that after Payne saw the film at the London Film Festival in October 2014, "the film really did honour my uncle." In the same interview, Turing's nephew Dermont Turing said Benedict Cumberbatch was "perfect casting. I couldn't think of anyone better." The codebreaker's great-nephew James Turing said Cumberbatch "knows things that I never knew before. The amount of knowledge he has about Alan is amazing."
Easter Eggs & References (2)
- #082
Contains a major spoiler — show
The film alludes to Alan Turing's suicide. When the police first visit his house, Turing is sweeping up cyanide powder (cyanide was what poisoned Turing), and Turing also buys apples for his friends when they come to visit (when Turing's body was found, a half-eaten apple lay beside his bed, and although the apple was never tested, it was presumed to be the method he used to take the cyanide).
- #083
Contains a major spoiler — show
In A Scandal in Belgravia (2012), Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock refers to the rumor that British codebreakers had cracked German encryption but could not prevent the attack on Coventry for fear that the fact the code had been broken would be revealed. Sherlock says he doubts this is true. These events also occur in the film, but instead of Coventry an attack on passenger ships is expected.
Deeper Meaning (8)
- #084
Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard) falls out badly with Alan Turing over the effect his actions could have on Hilton's brother, who was on active service. In the documentary about Bletchley Park, Station X (1999) (broadcast on PBS as Decoding Nazi Secrets (1999)), the real Peter Hilton (then a mathematics professor) offers this tribute to Alan Turing: "Alan Turing… was a genius… and there are all the differences between a very intelligent person and a genius. With very intelligent people… they come up with an idea and you say to yourself: 'I could have had that idea.' You never had that feeling with Turing. He constantly surprised you with the originality of his thought; it was magnificent."
- #085
Joan and Alan sit on the grass and Joan says "… but Euler's Theorem gives you that immediately," and there is a very brief shot of some mathematics in a notebook. The notebook contains equations involving prime numbers and modular arithmetic, which in later years would become the basis of the public-key encryption system that keeps everyone's personal information safe over the Internet. This is of course not an anachronistic "invention" of the 1941 RSA algorithm, but rather a clever joke by the filmmakers.
- #086
Framed tortoise shells are seen hanging on the walls of Turing's house. This is a nod to his later work showing that the patterns on tortoise shells, despite their apparent complexity (and beauty), can arise from a fairly simple set of rules or instructions, namely the underlying genetic code. This convinced Turing that extremely complex biological entities could arise from simple programs, that is, simple changes in DNA. This insight has profound implications for evolution, particularly for arguments claiming that the complexity of life cannot arise by chance alone.
- #087
In its review of the film, The New York Times listed a parental warning for "advanced mathematics." The full notice reads: "'The Imitation Game' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Illicit sex, terrifying violence and advanced mathematics; most of it mentioned rather than shown."
- #088
Numerous articles and books have been written about the breaking of the Enigma code; however, the role played by Polish cryptologists was often neglected in earlier works. One example of this came in 1974, when F. W. Winterbotham published a book titled "The Ultra Secret," in which he claimed the British were the first to break the cipher. That distinction actually belongs to the Poles, who achieved this feat, albeit on an older version of Enigma than the one used in World War II. Their efforts, their transfer of the knowledge they gained in breaking it, and the later efforts of Turing and the British are described in detail, for example, in Simon Singh's 1999 "The Code Book." While Britain was still using linguists to break codes before World War II, the Poles had understood that using mathematics to look for patterns was necessary. They then took it a step further by building electro-mechanical machines to search for the solution (known perhaps as "bombas" because of the ticking sound they made). These devices simulated the operation of an Enigma machine and allowed operators to cycle through possible settings in search of the Enigma settings that had encoded the message. This worked until the Germans increased the machine's complexity.
- #089
Turing's nephew Dermot, author of "Reflections of Alan Turing" and other books about his uncle, said mythologizing had been done about the mathematician's role at Bletchley. He said the Polish codebreakers were the ones who laid the foundation for breaking the German machine, and that, unlike what is shown in the film, his uncle's creation of the Bombe was "in the hands of engineers by 1939 and delivered to Bletchley Park in 1940." He said: "It didn't work very well but there was an improved version during the Battle of Britain. Turing's main work at Bletchley Park was done by 1939, before Britain really entered the war."
- #090
Contains a major spoiler — show
Early in the film, Detective Nock mentions Burgess and Maclean in connection with Turing's suspicious behavior. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean were members of the notorious "Cambridge Four" spy ring, which also included Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. As the film also implies, John Cairncross is regarded by many as the group's so-called "Fifth Man."
- #091
While being interrogated for indecent acts, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) explains everything to the investigator in a monologue about "thinking differently." In Steve Jobs (2015), the title character (Michael Fassbender) mentions Turing as an inspiration for Apple products. At the same time, Apple's slogan is given as "Think Different."
Life & Family (1)
- #092
Contains a major spoiler — show
At the end of the film, Turing is depicted working on his own computer in Manchester. In reality, while he had such a project at the National Physical Laboratory called ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), he abandoned it because no progress was being made. After demonstrating the first stored-program computer, he moved to the University of Manchester because he was more interested in programming than in building machines.
Related pages
- Benedict Cumberbatch — The Imitation Game comes up in the facts on that page
- Sherlock — The Imitation Game comes up in the facts on that page
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Reference databases
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- IMDb
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