The filming of the fight scene in which Neo takes on Smith and his clones (also known as The Burly Brawl) lasted 27 days.
The contract the Wachowskis signed for The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) included a clause stating they would not be obliged to give any media interviews.
About 97 percent of the materials on the film sets were recycled after shooting. For example, tons of wood were sent to Mexico to build housing for low-income people.
The role of Seraph was written specifically for Jet Li. Jet Li reportedly asked for the same fee Keanu Reeves was paid to make the film. The role was later changed to a woman and offered to Michelle Yeoh, who turned it down due to scheduling conflicts.
GM donated 300 cars to be used in the making of the film. In the end, all 300 were destroyed.
Learning the Scorpion Kick for the opening scene required Carrie-Anne Moss to practice for six months.
The filming of the film's highway chase scene lasted nearly three months (longer than the entire shooting schedule of many films). It was shot at the closed Alameda Naval Air Station (Latitude 37°47'26.69"N Longitude 122°19'8.08"W). The main East and West runways and parts of other runways were partially repaved and striped as a limited-access highway complete with entrance and exit ramps. "Sound barrier" walls restricted sightlines and made it easier to insert the CGI silhouette. Satellite and aerial images still show the remains of the highway, but this is very clear to a viewer looking at past images (around October 2002).
The special effects cost 100 million dollars.
Only a few of the Smith clones were actually played by Hugo Weaving. Open casting calls were held for men with similar body shapes, and Weaving's head was later composited onto them.
Gloria Foster (The Oracle) died before filming on the second Matrix film was finished. She had completed most of her scenes for this film, but none for the third film, The Matrix Revolutions (2003), or for Enter the Matrix (2003). Mary Alice was cast in her place.
Sir Sean Connery was originally cast to play the Architect but turned down the offer because he could not understand the film's concept. Connery mentions this in an interview about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) DVD.
Trinity uses a real hack to get into the computers at the power plant. She uses version Nmap 2.54BETA25, a real port-scanning tool used by both network administrators and hackers, to find a vulnerable SSH server, and then goes on to exploit that server using the 2001 SSH1 CRC32 exploit.
The cinematographer of The Matrix trilogy, in an interview on the Team Deakins podcast in the summer of 2020, described working on the sequels as a negative experience and said: "Everything that was good in the first experience was not good in the last two. We weren't free anymore. People were watching you. There was a lot of pressure. In my heart I didn't like them. I felt we should have gone in another direction. There was a lot of friction and a lot of personal problems, and that, honestly, showed on screen. It wasn't my most exciting moment, nor anyone else's. The Wachowskis had read that damn Stanley Kubrick book: 'Actors can't give natural performances until you wear them down.' So let's take 90! I want to dig up Stanley Kubrick and kill him."
Laurence Fishburne, Jada Pinkett Smith and Anthony Brandon Wong signed on to the film without reading the script.
There were numerous injuries on set: Carrie-Anne Moss broke her leg training during the wire work, Laurence Fishburne broke his arm in another training incident, and Hugo Weaving herniated a disc in his neck while being pulled back on a wire.
When the Merovingian swears in French, he says: "Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère." This is simply a string of curses put together and means "Goddamn Whore Filthy Shithouse Jerk Bugger of your mother."
It was reported that Keanu Reeves volunteered to give up his claim to a share of roughly 38 million dollars in ticket sales after the producers feared they would never be able to cover the film's special effects costs.
Grossing more than 735 million dollars in worldwide ticket revenue, this film was the commercially most successful R-rated film of its time. (However, in some countries it was given a less restrictive PG-13 equivalent rating.) In North America, it overtook Beverly Hills Cop (1984), the nineteen-year record holder as the highest-grossing R-rated release, but less than a year later it would be overtaken by The Passion of the Christ (2004).
The ship referred to as the Hammer is labeled (and in fact named) Mjolnir, a name that is difficult to pronounce. This explains why no one calls it by its real name. Mjolnir is the name of the famous hammer of Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
When Smith pulls up next to an Audi at the beginning of the film, its license plate is IS 5416. In the King James Bible, Isaiah 54:16 says: Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.
The 1.4-mile-long, three-lane highway was built specifically for the chase scene at the decommissioned Alameda Point Naval Base. It was demolished when filming was completed.
The Zion rave included more than 1000 extras.
Martial arts training for the lead actors began in November 2000 and lasted eight months.
Marcus Chong was supposed to return as Tank from the first film, but after a bitter dispute with the Wachowskis and the studio, his role was written out and the character was killed off-screen. Officially, he was not asked back because salary negotiations between Chong and the studio broke down (he was offered $250,000 to do both sequels, five times what he had been paid for the original, but he demanded $1 million). Chong, however, sued the company for failing to honor the verbal promise and written contract he had been given for the sequels. He later claimed that the Wachowskis had deliberately made false statements about him in an attempt to defame him, which led to him being blacklisted in Hollywood. The studio countered that after the failed salary negotiations, Chong was arrested for making threats against the directors. In 2018, Chong released a documentary on YouTube titled 'The Marcus Chong Story', in which he made further accusations against the studio and his former colleagues on the film (for example, that they denied him royalties, forced him to sign a fake contract and even tried to silence him).
The inspiration for the transition effect on the Twins was jellyfish.
The idea that all programs are born from the Source, a being made of pure light, and return there once their purpose is fulfilled, is a philosophy taken from the Hindu belief in Brahma, a god made of pure life energy in Hindu mythology. This god created everything, and it is man's destiny to return to Brahmand once his fate is fulfilled.
There are twelve hovercraft in Zion's fleet, ten of which are shown or mentioned in the films and the video game Enter the Matrix (2003), with their names and captains as follows: Osiris - Thadeus; Logos - Niobe; Nebuchadnezzar (Neb) - Morpheus; Mjolnir (Hammer) - Roland; Caduceus - Ballard; Gnosis - Ice; Vigilant - Soren; Icarus - Ajax; Brahma - Kali; Novalis - Tirant. The names of the remaining two ships appear in concept art: Ganesha and Vishnu.
Carrie-Anne Moss did some of her own motorcycle riding in the highway scene.
Samsung produced 10,000 cell phones resembling the one seen in the film (model SPH-N270), which quickly sold out.
During Neo's encounter with the Architect, if you are able to use subtitles, you can see Neo's alternate personalities making the following outbursts on the screens: "You can't control me!" "I'm going to smash you to bits!" "I'm going to fucking kill you!" "You can't make me do anything you old white prick!"
Pre-production on the two films took a year, shooting took a year, and then both films spent a year in post-production.
The monitors seen in the Architect's room are exactly the same as those seen in The Matrix (1999) when the agents capture Neo for interrogation and plant a bug in him.
In the burly brawl, Neo ultimately fights more than eighty Agent Smiths.
The Matrix Reloaded is the highest-grossing film in the series.
Laurence Fishburne suggested that his character remove his sunglasses while fighting the agent on the tractor-trailer, in order to remind the audience of Morpheus's fight with Agent Smith in The Matrix (1999) (during which he was not wearing sunglasses) and to better express his character's vulnerability.
In the original theatrical release of The Matrix Reloaded (2003), most of the signs during the highway chase featured eight-character hexadecimal codes instead of their real contents, as shown in later theatrical versions and on home video. These hexadecimal codes were the cheat codes for the companion game Enter the Matrix. In that game, there is a hacking mini-game in which these codes are combined with the "cheat" command to activate cheats.
When Morpheus's ship the Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed, the line "I had a dream, but now the dream is gone from me." is a reference to the Book of Daniel (Daniel 2:3), in which King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a golden statue that Daniel interprets for him. In this context, Morpheus is the prophet who guides the ship Nebuchadnezzar. It is interesting to note that Morpheus is the name of the Greek god of dreams, who changes dreams (literally "forms"). Combined with information from Enter the Matrix, it is possible that Morpheus's real name is Daniel.
The password Trinity uses when she hacks the Power Station's computer is Z1ON0101.
The original plan for releasing this film and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) was to release them a few weeks apart, not months.
The camera pan over Megacity that opens the highway chase took more than a year to complete, because almost every element other than the highway itself had to be computer-generated.
The marble floors and columns and many other textured surfaces that appear expensive were actually printed on "grand format" printers with a coating resistant to scratching and UV. A number of backlit surfaces (such as the "amber" elements in the Merovingian's restaurant) were also printed, but on a translucent material.
The Merovingians were the first royal dynasty in France and were said to be descendants of Jesus Christ. It is also the name of a kind of Gnostic Church (many elements of Gnosticism appear in the Matrix films).
When Neo confronts the Architect, the Architect tells him that "(the perfect Matrix's) doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being." During these two lines, among the images flashing on the monitor screens are Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Adolf Hitler, the explosion of the nuclear bomb, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
In an interview, Helmut Bakaitis revealed that his inspiration for the Architect's voice was Orson Welles.
The multiple Neos seen on the monitors during the Architect sequence are not, as might be thought, his predecessors (previous incarnations of the One) whose reactions were recorded during their visits to the Source. According to the shooting script, they represent Neo's different possible response options as the camera follows the actual outcome. This ties into the Architect's explanation that free choice is necessary for humans, a theme echoed in this film and in The Matrix Revolutions (2003), and a concept the machines struggle to understand while living through causality.
Gina Torres plays Cas, the widow of Dozer (Anthony Ray Parker), one of Morpheus's (Laurence Fishburne) crew members in The Matrix (1999). At the time the film was shot, Torres and Fishburne were married.
Promotional material for The Matrix Reloaded (2003) was in such high demand that distributors were extremely worried about it being stolen. To combat this, stands and banners were shipped under the code names "Caddyshack 2" and "The Replacements." Because of these names, some cinemas thought they had not received the materials and did not put them on display until the last minute.
Some unusual sound effects were used while Neo fights the Smith clones (The Burly Brawl). When Neo is kicked and flies through the air, knocking over a group of Smiths, toppling dominoes were used. At the end of the fight, when Neo throws Smith by the leg into his clones, the sound of a bowling ball hitting pins was used.
According to the DVD feature, among all the statements spoken by Neo's monitors are "You can't control me!", "I can say whatever I want!", "FUCKING DICK!", "I'll smash you to fucking bits!", "I'll fucking kill you!", "You old, white, prick!", "You can't make me do that!", "FUCK YOU!" and similar expressions. This gave the film 5 f-words, including one spoken in French.
According to Oakland city officials who worked with the filmmakers during the shoots in downtown Oakland, all red and blue colors had to be removed, so the sidewalk curbs were painted. There also could be no greenery or other plant life, so the shoots were done in the winter months, before the tree leaves sprouted in spring.
The red chair Morpheus sits in while explaining his plan to access the Source is the same red chair he sat in in The Matrix (1999) when he offered Neo the red and blue pills and explained to Neo what the Matrix is.
The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and this film were shot back to back.
On the side of the tractor trailer used in the highway chase scene are the words Big Endian Eggs. This is a reference to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels: because the Lilliputians were so small, they accordingly had small political problems as well. The Big-Endian and Little-Endian parties argued over whether soft-boiled eggs should be opened at the big end or the small end (Big-endian has also been adopted as computer terminology).
The key of the opening theme you hear at the start of every Matrix film (soaring strings and horns) rises with each film. The Matrix (1999) begins in the key of E minor, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) rises a full step to F-sharp minor, and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) rises a half step to the key of G minor.
It entered the Guinness Book of Records as the Widest Film Release, meaning 8,517 copies were shipped at the same time.
The two highways named in the film were 101 and 303. These are also the numbers of Neo's apartment and the Heart o' the City hotel room, respectively, in The Matrix (1999).
There are four computer-animated shots during the Burly Brawl.
It was initially banned in Egypt because of the film's religious themes, but it was later released after approval by the censorship bureau.
The code name of the film's script (while in production) was "The Burly Man." Burly Man is the name of the script Barton Fink works on in the film Barton Fink (1991). While shooting the highway scene, the directors watched the bustle from a vehicle the crew called the "Burly Van."
The character we know as "The Kid" actually bears the name "Michael Karl Popper," as revealed in The Animatrix (2003). Karl Popper was a famous twentieth-century philosopher who worked especially on the nature of free will and the relationship of mind and choice to physical realms.
The Wachowskis cast Monica Bellucci as Persephone after seeing her performance in Malena (2000).
The production spent sixty days in San Francisco. 48 of those days were spent shooting the highway scene alone.
The gun Persephone uses is the COP.357. It was also used by the replicant Leon Kowalski (Brion James) in Blade Runner (1982).
When the Keymaker explains how Neo will reach the Architect, he says they must disable 27 power blocks and that they will have exactly 314 seconds before the power begins to be rerouted. In the Bible, the 14th verse of the 3rd chapter of the 27th book of the New Testament (Revelation) speaks of witnessing the source of creation (who is the Architect in The Matrix).
After the first choice, Aaliyah, died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, Eva Mendes, Samantha Mumba, Brandy Norwood and Tatyana Ali were said to be possible replacements for the character Zee. Nona Gaye (daughter of Motown legend Marvin Gaye) was ultimately cast in the role.
When Neo and Smith first meet, there is white graffiti on the fence behind them. The graffiti is written in runes and spells out "thew" (thorn, eoh, wynn). "Thew" is Old English and means servant or slave. This ties into the film's theme.
To prepare for his role in the series, Keanu Reeves was asked to read three books: Simulacra and Simulation, Out of Control and The Psychology of Evolution. The hollowed-out book in which pre-Matrix Neo hides his hacked programs was a copy of Simulacra and Simulation.
At the beginning of the film, the captains talk about the Osiris's final transmission. The animated short film The Animatrix (2003) (part of The Animatrix (2003)) serves as a prequel to The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and reveals how the crew of the Osiris managed to warn the other Zion ships about the Sentinel army heading for Zion, which they will reach within 72 hours.
The Merovingian takes his name from a dynasty that ruled the Franks (in the southern and central regions of present-day France and Germany) for nearly three hundred years, from 486 to 751. The name translates as the "sons of Merovech," the founder of this dynasty, and they are said to be descended from the alleged child Jesus of Nazareth had with Mary Magdalene, who fled to France after the Crucifixion. The Merovingian kings are known for halting Islamic gains in their lands in Central and Eastern Europe. The dynasty was ended by the Pope, who ordered the deposition of its rulers and the installation of a new ruler from a different lineage.
Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski were offered the chance to direct Batman Begins (2005), but they turned it down to make the Matrix sequels.
The hair and makeup department used 84 bottles of hair gel during filming.
Lambert Wilson exaggerated his French accent considerably for the role of the Merovingian, because his natural accent is closer to an American accent and, due to being raised speaking both English and French, parts of a French accent are clearly evident.
For the Burly Brawl scene (Neo against several dozen Agent Smiths), the live-action scenes were shot in eighteen-second intervals to change camera angles and capture the more than 250 moves Neo had to perform. Some parts of the fight were so complex that they were created entirely digitally with computer-generated versions of Neo and the Smith clones; for this, footage of Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving was scanned by the visual effects team on Sony HDR-900 High Definition cameras. Some of these shots were criticized for looking obviously fake; however, fans actually found an in-universe explanation for it: since both Neo and the Smith clones are extremely powerful programs performing incredibly complex movements, their code could occupy so much virtual data space that even the Matrix program cannot render it realistically (similar to how video games can run more slowly when the graphical output is more than the console's processor can handle). This theory is not too far-fetched, because in The Matrix (1999), it was confirmed that the Matrix can visibly glitch when a program is altered while it is running.
The cinematographer appears as a security guard who is paid to count sheep.
In the Merovingian's garage there are eighteen Cadillacs from different time periods. These were provided through the New South Wales Cadillac Association, since Australia is a right-hand-drive country, most of the cars had fake steering wheels fitted while the original steering wheel was covered up.
In the car chase scene, just before entering the highway, the word "steak" is visible on a building in the background. "Steak" was the password given at the end of the first film's credits.
Among the bonus features on the home media release are the directors working on Keanu Reeves and his responses to the Architect, which appear on the monitors in the background of that scene. One of these takes is a long thirty-second rant so disrespectful that it is almost entirely replaced by censorship bleeps.
The tie-in video game Enter the Matrix contains a live-action scene identical to Reloaded, in which Monica Bellucci's Persephone agrees to help only after being met with a passionate kiss; except the recipient is Jada Pinkett Smith's Niobe rather than Neo. Just as in the film, it takes two attempts for Persephone to be satisfied.
In the Oracle and Neo's first meeting in the city park, Neo offers her a red licorice candy. After some discussion, Neo takes it, and then the Oracle unwraps a piece of her own red candy for herself. If you watch closely for just a few frames, you see that she has a red capsule in her hand and brings it to her mouth.
When Neo and Smith meet face to face for the first time, a lighting panel is clearly visible and its reflection shows in Smith's glasses. Notably, this is the only instance of it in a trilogy in which many characters wear sunglasses.
Total Film magazine says the film contains "the worst line ever delivered in a mainstream Hollywood film." The dialogue line: "Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of The Matrix."
There are 1,943 names in the credits.
Jada Pinkett Smith had previously auditioned for the role of Trinity in The Matrix (1999).
Gloria Foster's last film.
Apart from the highway chase and the Burly Brawl, which were shot in California, it was mostly filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia.
The Burly Brawl lasts 9 minutes on screen and involved three and a half years of post-production work.
Some screenings used professional Taekwondo instructors, including WTF silver medalist Master Timothy Connelly.
Rob Dougan composed his own section of the soundtrack, "Chateau," at his home in London without access to video editing software. To check whether the music was in sync with the temporary version of the scene, he would start the track on his laptop and simultaneously hit "play" on the DVD player with his foot. Once the track was composed, the instrumental parts were to be recorded by the film's orchestra in Los Angeles. Dougan, who had no connections in the city but did not want series composer Don Davis's style to dominate the piece, was eventually able to persuade the directors to let a friend orchestrate and conduct the performance.
The effects team organized "try-outs," where other effects companies could showcase any new technology that might be useful for shooting the film, especially the highway chase. As with the previous film, the Wachowskis had a clear vision of how the sequence should look, but the tools needed to shoot it did not necessarily exist yet.
For the highway chase scene, Carrie-Anne Moss had to perform a stunt while driving a modified Cadillac, braking into a "sliding 90" in which the car slides sideways directly toward the camera. To do this, she had to perform a move called the Juicy Lift, a complex maneuver she learned at stunt driving school that involves pulling the handbrake and turning the steering wheel in exactly that way. She did it in a single continuous shot.
There are many references to the number 101.
The film's code name was "The Burly Man," the title of the first script the Wachowskis developed for Four Corners Productions.
The first choice for shooting the highway chase scene was the highway in Akron, Ohio, but the team decided not to shoot there because the weather was snowy and very cold.
The model maker of the Nebuchadnezzar put the initials of his name on the rear details of the ship. It is hard to see clearly, but when the ship enters the dock in Zion, the rear of the ship fills the frame. Look at the upper left corner for a stylized JHD, and the upper right corner for a mirrored version.
Monica Bellucci and Keanu Reeves had previously appeared together in Dracula (1992).
Jada Pinkett Smith was nine months pregnant when she received a phone call from her manager informing her that she was being considered for roles in films.
During the highway chase, the police radio officer calls "1-Adam-12, please respond" (about a minute later). This was the call sign of the police cruiser in the television series Adam-12 (1968).
In Neo's conversation with the Architect, it is revealed that Neo is in the sixth iteration of the Matrix and is the sixth version of the anomaly. Therefore, another way of referring to him would be to say he is "Number 6." The Wachowskis are known to be fans of the TV series The Prisoner (1967) (in the first film there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it nod to the series). The series' main character, who valued individuality and struggled against the system, was known as Number 6. Fans of the series will notice an even deeper connection between the two numbers, but that would spoil the ending of a different game.
Seraph states that he protects what matters most. The character is probably a metaphor for computer firewalls, a metaphor implied by the name Seraph, a shortened version of seraphim, a kind of fiery or passionate angel. This fits the series' religious and techno allegory; it also fits the Alice in Wonderland motif, because before meeting the Caterpillar (the Oracle), the animals in Wonderland look at Alice because she is too big and throw cakes at her to keep her away, just as Seraph fights Neo to keep him away.
The book Persephone moves to open the library is Arthur Schopenhauer's "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung." The book immediately to its left is also by Schopenhauer, "Parerga and Paralipomena."
During the film's production, because the twins' Cadillac Escalade EXT was not in production, General Motors had to combine fiberglass Cadillac parts with prototype Chevrolet Avalanche trucks to create the black truck seen in the highway chase. The Lincoln Continental from The Matrix (1999) makes a brief cameo appearance near the beginning of the film. The underground garage where the characters choose a car is filled with almost nothing but Cadillacs. The row closest to the door, in order of age, holds a '37 Model 60 V8, followed by two '57 Eldorado Biarritzes, one black coupe and one silver convertible, a '63 Eldorado, a '66 Eldorado (the '63 and '66 Eldorados are convertibles only. There was no hardtop.), '69 and '71 Eldorado Cabriolets, the aforementioned EXT, and a pre-production model. 2004 XLR. In the second row is a 1933 LaSalle Model 345C, identifiable from a shot in the first row's fight scene. The remaining cars in the second row are somewhat harder to identify. There are three DeVilles, definitely a '70 and a '76 and possibly a '73, an '81-'84 Sedan DeVille or Fleetwood, and probably a late-'90s Catera.
Commander Lock is the only rebel with a name in the real world, though it can also be assumed that Thomas Anderson is also Neo's real name).
The highway exit sign passed during the highway chase (the sign listing Whipple Ave., Woodside Rd. and Marsh Rd.) is the same sign you would pass in real life on U.S. Highway 101 if you had just left Oracle Corporation's headquarters and were heading south on U.S. Highway 101.
The film takes place six months after The Matrix (1999). Meanwhile, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) was released six months before The Matrix Revolutions (2003).
Keanu Reeves reported earning 156 million dollars from the first two Matrix sequels.
Juno Reactor's "Mona Lisa Overdrive" appears on the soundtrack. This is also the name of the novel that followed author William Gibson's earlier work "Neuromancer". The Matrix concept was largely influenced by his work. Gibson also wrote the story for the film "Johnny Mnemonic", which also starred Keanu Reeves.
The film the servants watch in the background is Brides of Dracula (1960). Monica Bellucci played one of Dracula's brides in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).
During the highway chase, one of the exits leads to a place called Paterson Pass (this is a road located between Livermore and Tracy, California, east of the Alameda highway production site - the exit is off Interstate 5). This was a nod to production designer Owen Paterson.
Lara Dutta was offered a role in this film and in The Matrix Revolutions (2003), but she turned it down because she did not like the script.
The scissor weapons used by the twins are actually old-fashioned, straight-edged razors.
After Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), it is the third sequel in history to gross over 700 million dollars worldwide.
Michelle Yeoh was offered the role of The Seraph but turned it down due to a scheduling conflict.
Following the continuing title sequence, a teaser for the next film in the "The Matrix Revolutions" series appears.
In the fight with three agents at the beginning of the film, Neo kicks one of the agents into a lamppost, a reference to Geofrey Darrow, the conceptual designer of the Matrix films, of Darrow Industries.
The pen in the Architect's hand is a Lamy Swift rollerball pen.
Despite having been shot in Super 35, "Filmed in Panavision" is listed in the end credits sequence.
After adjusting for inflation, this is the third highest-grossing R-rated action film in domestic box office revenue, after Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
Genevieve O'Reilly's first film.
In the highway scene, with the metropolis in the background of the action and the highway in the foreground, there is a sign showing Whipple Avenue, Woodside Road and Marsh Road as highway exits. Since the highway and most of the filming locations were in Oakland and Alameda, the exits are actually the exits leading to Redwood City, across the Bay from the filming locations, off Highway 101. All the exits are in exactly the same order as on Highway 101; leading to or near Oracle's Headquarters. Whipple is the exit for Redwood Shores and Redwood City closest to San Carlos, and Marsh Road is the exit for the same cities closest to Atherton, on the border between Redwood City and North Fair Oaks.
Harry Lennix and Laurence Fishburne would go on to appear in Man of Steel (2013) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Lennix in the role of General Swanwick and Fishburne in the role of Perry White.
Da Brat auditioned to play Zee.
Monica Bellucci would later take on the small role of Lucia, the widow of the criminal Marco Sciarra, a member of the SPECTRE organization, in Spectre (2015). Persephone (Bellucci) is the wife of the Merovingian (a program living as a powerful crime syndicate leader in the Matrix), and she willingly betrays the Merovingian and helps Neo, Morpheus and Trinity reach the Keymaker.
It was the highest-grossing R-rated film worldwide until it was surpassed by Deadpool (2016).
It grossed $166 million worldwide in its opening weekend, making it the third-biggest global opening in history at the time, after The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) ($190 million) and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) ($179 million).
It is the fourth R-rated film in history to gross over $200 million domestically, after Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).
It grossed $92 million domestically in its opening weekend and then, with $115 million, achieved the second-biggest opening weekend gross in history after Spider-Man (2002). It was also the biggest opening weekend for an R-rated film, surpassing Hannibal (2001) with $58 million, and held that record for more than a decade until Deadpool (2016) finally surpassed it with $132 million.
The Burly Brawl scene cost $30-40 million to produce.
At the time of its release, it was Warner Bros.' third highest-grossing film worldwide, after Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).
Each of the lead actors reprised their role in the tie-in video game Enter the Matrix (2003).