FILM · 2007 · USA
Zodiac
- Directed by
- David Fincher
- Runtime
- 157 min
- Studio
- Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Phoenix Pictures
144 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
The story follows the manhunt for the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, taunting police with letters, bloodstained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers.
144 Interesting Facts About Zodiac
Interesting Facts (63)
- #001
To preserve authenticity, all of the murder victims' costumes were painstakingly recreated from forensic evidence loaned to the production, down to the blue and white floral pattern on Darlene Ferrin's corset top.
- #002
Contains a major spoiler — show
The only real comment Robert Graysmith made about the finished script was: "God, now I see why my wife divorced me."
- #003
Because David Fincher wanted the film to be as realistic as possible, he decided not to depict any of the alleged Zodiac murders for which no surviving victim or witness could be found.
- #004
Because the area had changed substantially since 1969, trees had to be flown in by helicopter to Lake Berryessa, and David Fincher wanted it to resemble the murder site as closely as possible.
- #005
Zodiac's first confirmed attack — the murders on Lake Herman Road — was cut from the film because there was no surviving victim to confirm the details. The filmmakers therefore decided to open the film with the July 4 murders, considered Zodiac's second double homicide.
- #006
The real-life survivor of the Lake Berryessa attack appears as an extra beside his wife in the background of the scene in which Marty Lee suggests that David Toschi take some time off work.
- #007
Robert Graysmith and Paul Avery were not actually friends. Their relationship was fictionalized for the film.
- #008
Hair was digitally added to close-ups of Jake Gyllenhaal's knuckles while he draws or writes letters. David Fincher felt Gyllenhaal's hands "were too hairless and pretty."
- #009
Dermot Mulroney had to wear a thick suit for several of his short scenes because David Fincher thought he looked too fit for his character.
- #010
Nancy Slover, the Vallejo operator who took the first Zodiac call, was asked to help with voice direction by selecting from recordings of various unidentified actors' readings. After choosing the recording with the voice closest to Zodiac's, it turned out she had picked a reading by John Carroll Lynch, who plays prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen.
- #011
The film begins and ends with the character of Michael Renault Mageau, a real-life survivor of the Zodiac.
- #012
In an interview with Empire magazine, George Lucas once said that the Zodiac murders had captured his imagination when he was a high school student and then a college student at USC, and that he always felt Toschi was harshly judged over how the investigation was conducted. He explained that this was why he named a location at Tosche Station on Tatooine in honor of the SFPD inspector.
- #013
In one of the Zodiac's letters, he speculated about who would play him in a film about himself. In this film he is portrayed by three different actors, and in any shot featuring the Zodiac the actor's face is always out of focus or obscured. This allowed viewers to speculate and perhaps created a barrier against the real Zodiac killer, so that he was not portrayed by a visible or famous actor.
- #014
To save time, David Fincher decided to add all the blood in the murder scenes digitally.
- #015
Contains a major spoiler — show
Paul Avery did not retreat into a dark life away from his work at the San Francisco Chronicle as the film suggests. In the mid-1970s he reported on the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst and turned his reporting into a book: "The Voices of Guns" (1976). He was also married and the father of two daughters, which the film mentions only briefly.
- #016
Toschi spends the entire film eating food that comes from the people around him (animal crackers, sandwiches). At the film's climax, when Graysmith lays out the solution in the restaurant, Toschi pays for both of their meals.
- #017
The taxi scene at Washington and Cherry Streets in San Francisco could not be shot entirely in San Francisco because of filming restrictions and opposition from neighborhood residents. The production team therefore built a set at Downey Studios just outside Los Angeles replicating the intersection, including the street, the apartment buildings and the crime scene. San Francisco backgrounds were digitally inserted to complete the scene. Only a few seconds of actual footage shot at the original crime scene location remain in the film.
- #018
(At about one hour and thirty-five minutes) The scenes in which Dave Toschi and Robert Graysmith watch Dirty Harry (1971) were shot at the Mann National Theatre in Westwood, California. The cinema's flashy color schemes were not added by the art department. The theater's quite retro interiors had remained unchanged since the National was first built in 1969. Interestingly, this film was shown at the Mann National Theatre in mid-March 2007. Thus, real moviegoers watched celluloid moviegoers occupy seats on the National's signature wide screen. The theater has since been demolished.
- #019
Mark Ruffalo said: "I'll never forget the time they negotiated for my deal [on Zodiac]. The studio negotiator literally told my manager: 'Look, we don't care about Mark Ruffalo. We don't even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie, so you'll take what we're offering you or forget it.'".
- #020
Robert Downey Jr. was so unaccustomed to David Fincher's multiple-take approach and digital shooting process that he rebelled against Fincher on set by hiding glass jars filled with his urine, because of "having no time to get my shit together in my trailer." Downey eventually accepted Fincher's demands and recalled: "Except for the few times I wanted to strangle him, I decided to give him what he wanted. I think I'm the perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags."
- #021
Jake Gyllenhaal was somewhat surprised when David Fincher gave him a doll and an old-fashioned diaper to prepare for the role of a young father.
- #022
Contains a major spoiler — show
The song playing during the first attack and also over the end title sequence is Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man." Donovan's daughter, Ione Skye, plays the woman who survives being abducted by a man who may be the Zodiac.
- #023
South Korean film director Bong Joon Ho classified David Fincher's film as a "masterpiece," writing: "There was really nothing to find fault with about it, down to the cinematography, art direction, and action."
- #024
In real life, when Michael Mageau picked Arthur Leigh Allen out of a series of photographs, he shouted: "That's him! He's the man who shot me!"
- #025
In real life, Melvin Belli never touched the Zodiac letter sent to him.
- #026
Contains a major spoiler — show
After the studio insisted that the film not run longer than two hours and fifteen minutes, negotiations with Sony fell through. Warner Bros. and Paramount agreed to share the production costs even though a "talky" film with an inconclusive ending would be hard to sell.
- #027
Mark Ruffalo said: "If you understand who these cops were, you understand that they had to set aside their hunches and personal beliefs. Dave Toschi told me: 'The moment that man (Arthur Leigh Allen) walked in the door, I knew it was him.' He was sure he had him, but he never had solid evidence. So he had to keep investigating all the other leads."
Zodiac (2007): Dave Toschi, in the streetImage: Wikimedia Commons · Greg2600, CC BY-SA 2.0 - #028
Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo were cast partly thanks to Jennifer Aniston. During pre-production, director David Fincher asked her who her favorite co-stars were, and she named Gyllenhaal and Ruffalo, with whom she had worked on The Good Girl (2002) and Rumor Has It… (2005).
- #029
Although the film was shot digitally, certain sequences, especially slow-motion ones, had to be captured on film.
- #030
For location shoots, digitally erasing satellite dishes was always cheaper than physically removing them.
- #031
Contains a major spoiler — show
When surviving victim Michael Renault Mageau was tracked down and shown a photo lineup to identify the man who shot him, the array included a photo of Bob Stephenson, one of the three actors who portray the killer in the film.
- #032
The scene in which Jake Gyllenhaal receives information from Mark Ruffalo outside at night and appears with his baby in a stroller was complicated by the fact that Gyllenhaal was suffering from a severe case of the flu at the time and did not want to shoot it. David Fincher insisted he do it because they had the location for only one night.
- #033
While Robert Graysmith is driving his son to school, the radio announcer in his car mentions the free concert The Rolling Stones were about to give at the Altamont Speedway. It was Melvin Belli who, one day before the event, suggested the Stones hold their concert there after the original venue fell through.
- #034
The film pays tribute to Dirty Harry (1971), whose antagonist Scorpio was based on the Zodiac killer. Another fictional policeman also faced an enemy named Scorpio around that time. In his book, Robert Graysmith notes that during the Zodiac murders police investigated a possible connection to the Dick Tracy comic strip, in which Dick Tracy confronts a Zodiac-themed gang led by a mastermind named Scorpio.
- #035
David Fincher was especially eager for David Shire to provide the film's score, much as he had done so effectively on All the President's Men (1976). Sound editor Ren Klyce contacted the legendary Walter Murch, who had worked with Shire on The Conversation (1974), and Murch in turn contacted Shire.
- #036
About David Fincher's endless demands for takes, Mark Ruffalo said "[he] makes Michael Mann look like he's working on a McDonald's hamburger line during rush hour." He noted that he and Mann had worked together on Collateral (2004).
- #037
Kathleen Johns appears as the female driver who was abducted by a man who threatened to kill her and her baby (whom she would later identify as the Zodiac, based on a composite sketch of the man wanted for killing Paul Stine).
- #038
In the film, the cipher sent to the Chronicle was actually sent to the Examiner.
- #039
The US Blu-ray released by Paramount Home Video had a very limited print run. For a time it became one of the rarest Blu-rays on the market, fetching close to a hundred dollars from second-hand online retailers until Warner Home Video bought the Paramount catalog in 2012 and reissued it the following year.
- #040
Contains a major spoiler — show
The two surviving male victims of the Zodiac's attacks, Mike Mageau and Bryan Hartnell, actually met and chatted in the courtroom many years later. The first was there as a defendant, the second as a lawyer on a different case.
- #041
(About twenty-four minutes in) The phone number 626-2345 seen on the Yellow Cab in the film was the real phone number of the Yellow Cab Company in San Francisco. By the time the film was released, the number had changed.
- #042
Over the years changes were made at Blue Rock Springs, so the murders committed there had to be re-created at a different location that more closely resembled the park as it was in 1969.
- #043
It was sent to theaters under the title "Gemini."
- #044
On July 6, 2005, Variety reported that Sir Gary Oldman had signed on to play attorney Melvin Belli in the film, and a later story in the Hollywood Reporter stated that he had done so. On February 14, 2006, Gary Oldman's management company, The Douglas Management Group, stated that the Hollywood Reporter story was not true and that "Mr. Oldman is not in the film, and never was." In an interview with Cinematical on March 2, 2007, "Zodiac" author Robert Graysmith said: "Now Gary Oldman was supposed to play Melvin Belli. He got into a lot of trouble, he had the tools but it just physically wasn't going to be. The work, he just didn't have the surroundings." Oldman went on to work with David Fincher on Mank (2020).
- #045
Arthur Leigh Allen told Bill Armstrong that he was left-handed. However, while most people wear a watch on their non-dominant hand, he wore his watch on his left hand, a possible indication that Allen's claim was not true. John Carroll Lynch, who plays him, is himself left-handed. Most, though not all, left-handed people wear a wristwatch on the same wrist as right-handed people (the left arm), because all but a few watches are set up that way (the winding crown, push buttons for complications, etc., are on the right side of the watch).
- #046
The Paramount and Warner Bros. logos used at the start of the film are almost, but not exactly, the same as the logos those studios used in 1969. In the Warner Bros. case, the 1969 versions did not use their classic shield as shown here; instead they carried a "Warner Bros.-Seven Arts" logo, used when the studio merged with Ray Stark and Eliot Hyman's production company Seven Arts. The Paramount logo, written in 1969 as "A Gulf+Western company," now reads "A Viacom Company," reflecting the new ownership.
- #047
(About one hour and forty-five minutes in) In the restaurant scene where Robert Graysmith buys David Toschi a hamburger, Toschi chews the burger for a while before spitting the chewed food into a napkin. This was because Mark Ruffalo, who plays Toschi, is a vegetarian and refused to eat meat. (However, one hour and twenty minutes into the film, Toschi takes half of his partner's BLT and, rather than removing the bacon before eating, picks the tomato out of it.)
- #048
In the special promotional film This Is Zodiac (2007), director David Fincher explains that he spoke with Zodiac survivor Michael Renault Mageau, and that the information Mageau gave him showed Fincher how to stage the scene in which Mageau and his girlfriend are attacked.
- #049
Arthur Leigh Allen is played by John Carroll Lynch. On October 6, 1969, the real Arthur Leigh Allen was interviewed by the Vallejo Police Department, in the person of a detective named John Lynch.
- #050
(At roughly forty-three minutes) The theme music in the newsroom scene is the music used by National Nine News (Australia) in the 1980s and 1990s.
- #051
Contains a major spoiler — show
Bob Vaughan, whom Graysmith followed home after they met outside the theater, was Captain Ken Narlow's real favorite suspect. Pointing the finger at the theater projectionist at first was a way of adding Vaughan, another major suspect, to the story that Graysmith was also part of. Both Graysmith and the SFPD later speculated that Vaughan's handwriting and background were used by Zodiac as a way of deceiving the police in his letters.
- #052
In the overhead shot of the Transamerica Pyramid's early construction, the "box" foundation is completely devoid of any piles or columns. Unlike most conventional high-rise foundations, the Pyramid was uniquely built without any piles driven into bedrock. The building's weight actually rests on the trusses of the first two levels, and the trusses in turn stand on this "box."
- #053
The terrifying basement was inspired by Dermot Mulroney's actual basement. The production team recreated it because "it had these concrete foundation pieces placed with a walkway that made you feel like you were going through a tunnel."
- #054
Zodiac received a total of 28 nominations across all the different award programs but won only one (the Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Director for David Fincher). This is believed to be because Zodiac was released so early in the year (March 2007) and came up against heavyweight contenders such as No Country for Old Men (2007), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Atonement (2007).
- #055
(At roughly fourteen minutes) The bar Paul Avery frequents in the film is called Morti's. Mortis means death in Latin.
- #056
Clint Eastwood did not allow any scene from Dirty Harry (1971) to be used in the screening attended by Graysmith and Toschi. David Fincher told Total Film: "He didn't want to be in a serial killer movie. I guess he's done enough of them."
- #057
When the suspect killer Arthur Leigh Allen is brought in for questioning in the film, a title appears on screen: SEPT. 14, 1972. After his release for lack of evidence, Inspector David Toschi attends a SPECIAL SCREENING - SFPD, a showing of DIRTY HARRY in the marquee of the NORTH POINT THEATRE. DIRTY HARRY premiered on December 22, 1971. In reality, a worldwide gala charity performance was held for the San Francisco Police Activities League, most likely a few days before the December 22 opening.
- #058
The film contains a deliberate anachronism: when Melanie orders penne with vodka cream sauce at dinner, the dish had not been invented until the 1980s. Fincher knew it was wrong but said, "being a gourmand, I let it slide."
- #059
Many of the film's most striking images were created on computers, including the rocket explosions in the opening scene, the shot looking at the foggy traffic from the Golden Gate Bridge, and the overhead tracking shot of the taxi. The accelerated construction of the Transamerica Pyramid was done using 2D and 3D digital mattes.
- #060
Toschi's wife says she is wearing "the Folgers," meaning she is making coffee. A month before that scene takes place, Abigail Folger (whose grandfather founded Folgers Coffee) was killed along with Voytek Frykowski, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring by members of Charles Manson's "family."
- #061
The real bar declined to be featured. The tavern where the reporters hang out would not allow its name to be used because the film depicts cocaine use.
- #062
Contains a major spoiler — show
Zodiac called lawyer Melvin Belli a week before Christmas and told him he had to kill because "today is my birthday." After learning that Arthur Leigh Allen was born on December 18, Robert Graysmith concluded that Allen was the Zodiac. Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Graysmith in the film, was born on December 19.
- #063
The character Mike Majeu is mocked by Darlene on July 4 for being cold. July night temperatures in Vallejo average below the 50s.
Production Story (63)
- #064
To preserve authenticity, all costumes of the murder victims were meticulously recreated from forensic evidence loaned to the production, down to the blue and white floral pattern of Darlene Ferrin's bodice.
- #065
Mark Ruffalo was very impressed when he met the investigator he plays in the film, David Toschi, and learned that Toschi remembered every detail of every case perfectly.
- #066
Because David Fincher wanted the film to be as realistic as possible, he decided not to depict any of the Zodiac murders in which there was said to be no surviving victim or witness.
- #067
Because the area had changed greatly since 1969, trees had to be flown in by helicopter to Lake Berryessa, and David Fincher wanted the location to resemble the crime scene as closely as possible.
- #068
The Zodiac's first confirmed attack — the murders on Lake Herman Road — was cut from the film because there was no surviving victim to confirm the details. The filmmakers therefore decided to open the film with the July 4 murders, considered the Zodiac's second double murder.
- #069
The real-life survivor of the Lake Berryessa attack appears as an extra alongside his wife in the background of the scene in which Marty Lee suggests that David Toschi take some time off work.
- #070
Hair was digitally added to close-ups of Jake Gyllenhaal's knuckles while he draws or holds a letter. David Fincher felt that Gyllenhaal's hands "were too hairless and pretty."
- #071
Dermot Mulroney had to wear a thick suit for his few short scenes because David Fincher thought he was in far too good shape for his character.
- #072
Nancy Slover, the Vallejo operator who received the first Zodiac call, was asked to help with voice direction by selecting recordings of readings by various unidentified actors. After choosing the recording with the voice closest to the Zodiac, it turned out that she had picked a reading by John Carroll Lynch, who plays the prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen.
- #073
David Fincher recalled how he got home from school one day in his childhood after noticing that his bus was being followed by a police car. His father answered realistically: "Oh yes. There's a serial killer who has killed four or five people, calls himself the Zodiac, has threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus."
- #074
In an interview with Empire magazine, George Lucas once stated that the Zodiac murders captured his imagination when he was a high school student and then a college student at USC at the time, and that he felt Toschi was always harshly judged over how the investigation was conducted. He explained that he chose a location at Tosche Station on Tatooine in honor of the SFPD inspector.
- #075
In one of the Zodiac's letters, he muses about who would play him in a film about himself. In this film he is played by three separate actors, and in any shot featuring the Zodiac, the actor's face is always out of focus or obscured. This allowed the audience to speculate and perhaps created a barrier against the real Zodiac killer, so that he was not portrayed by a visible or famous actor.
- #076
Jake Gyllenhaal shares one of the film's most chilling scenes with Charles Fleischer. In real life, the two have known each other since Gyllenhaal was three years old.
- #077
Paul Avery did not retreat into a dark life away from his work at the San Francisco Chronicle as the film suggests. In the mid-1970s he reported on the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst and turned his reports into a book: "The Voices of Guns" (1976). He was also married and the father of two daughters, something the film mentions only briefly.
- #078
Toschi spends the entire film eating food brought to him by those around him (animal crackers, sandwiches). At the film's climax, when Graysmith lays out the solution in the restaurant, Toschi pays for both of their meals.
- #079
Anthony Edwards was cast as Armstrong because David Fincher wanted him played by a completely decent person. Fincher already knew him, less from his work on ER (1994) than because they were neighbors.
- #080
The taxi scene at Washington and Cherry Streets in San Francisco could not be shot entirely in San Francisco due to filming restrictions and opposition from neighborhood residents. The production team therefore built a set at Downey Studios just outside Los Angeles replicating the intersection, including the street, the apartment buildings and the crime scene. To complete the scene, backgrounds of San Francisco were inserted digitally. Only a few seconds of actual footage shot at the original crime scene location remain in the film.
- #081
(At about one hour and thirty-five minutes) The scenes in which Dave Toschi and Robert Graysmith watch Dirty Harry (1971) were shot at the Mann National Theatre in Westwood, California. The cinema's flashy color schemes were not added by the art department. The theater's decidedly retro interiors had remained unchanged since 1969, when the National was first built. Interestingly, this film was shown at the Mann National Theatre in mid-March 2007. Thus, real moviegoers watched celluloid moviegoers occupy their seats on the National's signature wide screen. The theater has since been demolished.
- #082
Mark Ruffalo said: "I'll never forget the time they negotiated my deal [for Zodiac]. The studio negotiator literally told my manager: 'Look, we don't care about Mark Ruffalo. We don't even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie, so you'll take what we're offering you or forget it.'"
- #083
Robert Downey Jr. was so unaccustomed to David Fincher's multiple-take approach and digital shooting process that he rebelled against Fincher on set by hiding glass jars filled with his urine, for "having no time to get my shit together in my trailer." Downey eventually accepted Fincher's demands and recalled: "Other than wanting to strangle him a few times, I decided to give him what he wanted. I think I'm the perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags."
- #084
Jake Gyllenhaal was a little surprised when David Fincher gave him a doll and an old-fashioned diaper to prepare for the role of young father.
- #085
In the film, Graysmith mentions that Toschi also carried his gun like Bullitt. Avery says Toschi got this from Bullitt, whose lead character was inspired by Toschi, and that Steve McQueen's performance in Bullitt (1968) was inspired by Toschi.
- #086
The song playing during the first attack and also over the end title sequence is Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man." Donovan's daughter, Ione Skye, plays the woman who survives being abducted by a man who may be Zodiac.
- #087
In real life, when Michael Mageau picked Arthur Leigh Allen out of a series of photographs, he exclaimed: "That's him! He's the man who shot me!"
- #088
Negotiations with Sony fell through after the studio insisted the film not run longer than two hours and fifteen minutes. Warner Bros. and Paramount agreed to share the production costs even though an open-ended "talky" film would be hard to sell.
- #089
Mark Ruffalo said: "If you understand who these cops are, you understand that they have to set aside their hunches and personal beliefs. Dave Toschi told me: 'The moment that man (Arthur Leigh Allen) walked through the door, I knew it was him.' He was sure he had him, but he never had solid evidence. So he had to keep investigating every other lead."
- #090
Although the film was shot digitally, certain sections, especially the slow-motion ones, had to be shot on film.
- #091
For location shoots, it was always cheaper to erase satellite dishes digitally rather than physically remove them.
- #092
Throughout the film's score, a single trumpet playing a four-note motif is frequently heard in many scenes, a fitting tribute to American composer Charles Ives's piece "The Unanswered Question."
- #093
When a photo lineup is shown to surviving victim Michael Renault Mageau in an attempt to identify the man who shot him, one of the photos is of Bob Stephenson, one of the three actors who portray the killer in the film.
- #094
Robert Graysmith's decoding of the second Zodiac cipher (containing 340 characters) is in fact incorrect and was rejected as invalid by the FBI. The cipher was finally broken in December 2020 by an international team of three amateur cryptographers, a computer scientist and a software developer, with the help of modern computing resources that did not exist in 1969-70. The decrypted message offered no useful clue as to Zodiac's identity. Because of deliberate or accidental errors introduced during the encryption process, the cipher turned out to be quite difficult to solve.
- #095
The scene in which Jake Gyllenhaal receives information from Mark Ruffalo outside at night and Jake appears with his baby in a stroller was complicated by the fact that Gyllenhaal was suffering from an extreme case of the flu at the time and did not want to shoot the scene. David Fincher insisted he do it because they had the location for only one night.
- #096
While Robert Graysmith is driving his son to school, the broadcaster on his car radio mentions the free concert The Rolling Stones were about to give at the Altamont Speedway at the time. It was Melvin Belli who suggested the Stones hold their concert there after the original venue fell through a day before the event.
- #097
The film is a tribute to Dirty Harry (1971), whose antagonist Scorpio was based on the Zodiac killer. Another fictional policeman also encountered an enemy named Scorpio around this time. In his book, Robert Graysmith notes that during the Zodiac murders the police investigated a possible connection to the Dick Tracy comic strip, in which Dick Tracy faces a Zodiac-themed gang led by a mastermind named Scorpio.
- #098
Near the end of the film there is a shelf filled with copies of Graysmith's book 'Zodiac.' This is the real book published by the original author, source and technical consultant Robert Graysmith about his search for Zodiac, which can be purchased.
- #099
David Fincher was particularly eager to have David Shire provide the film's score, much as he had done so effectively on All the President's Men (1976). Sound editor Ren Klyce reached out to the legendary Walter Murch, who had worked with Shire on The Conversation (1974), and he in turn contacted Shire.
- #100
Mark Ruffalo said of David Fincher's endless demand for takes: "[he] makes Michael Mann look like he's working on a McDonald's hamburger line during rush hour." He noted that Mann and Ruffalo had worked together on Collateral (2004).
- #101
Kathleen Johns appears as the woman driver abducted by a man who threatened to kill her and her baby (whom she would later identify as Zodiac, based on a composite sketch of the man wanted for killing Paul Stine).
- #102
Zodiac's two surviving male victims, Mike Mageau and Bryan Hartnell, actually met and chatted in the courtroom years later. The first was there as a defendant in custody, the second as a lawyer in a different case.
- #103
(At about twenty-four minutes in) The phone number 626-2345 seen on the Yellow Cab in the film was the real phone number of the Yellow Cab Company in San Francisco. By the time the film was released, the number had changed.
- #104
Over the years, changes were made at Blue Rock Springs, so the murders committed there had to be recreated at a different location that more closely resembled the park as it was in 1969.
- #105
(About forty-four minutes in) Television host Jim Dunbar mentions that Melvin Belli appeared on Star Trek (1966) in A. M. The San Francisco scene. Belli guest-starred in the episode And the Children Shall Lead (1968), which first aired on October 11, 1968.
- #106
On July 6, 2005, Variety reported that Sir Gary Oldman had signed on to play attorney Melvin Belli in the film, and a story later published in the Hollywood Reporter stated that he had done so. On February 14, 2006, Gary Oldman's management company, The Douglas Management Group, stated that the Hollywood Reporter story was not accurate and that "Mr. Oldman is not in the film, and never was." In a March 2, 2007 interview with Cinematical, "Zodiac" writer Robert Graysmith said: "Now Gary Oldman was supposed to play Melvin Belli. He got into a lot of trouble, he had the tools but it just physically wasn't going to be. The work, he just didn't have the surroundings." Oldman went on to work with David Fincher on Mank (2020).
- #107
Arthur Leigh Allen told Bill Armstrong that he was left-handed. However, while most people wear their watch on their non-dominant hand, he wore his watch on his left hand, which is a possible indication that Allen's claim was not true. John Carroll Lynch, who plays him, is himself left-handed. Most, though not all, left-handed people wear a wristwatch on the same wrist as right-handed people (the left arm), because all but a few watches are set up that way (the winding crown, push buttons for complications, etc., are on the right side of the watch).
- #108
Warner Bros. The Paramount and Paramount logos used at the beginning of the film are almost identical to the logos those studios used in 1969, but not exactly the same. Warner Bros. In the case of the 1969 versions, they did not use their classic shields as shown here; instead they carried a "Warner Bros.-Seven Arts" logo, used when the studio merged with Ray Stark and Eliot Hyman's production company Seven Arts. In 1969, the Paramount logo, written as "A Gulf+Western company," now reads "A Viacom Company," reflecting the new ownership.
- #109
(About an hour and forty-five minutes in) In the restaurant scene where Robert Graysmith treats David Toschi to a hamburger, Toschi chews the hamburger for a while before spitting the chewed food into a napkin. This was because Mark Ruffalo, who plays Toschi, is a vegetarian and refused to eat meat. (However, an hour and twenty minutes into the film, Toschi takes half of his partner's BLT and, rather than removing the bacon before eating it, removes the tomato from inside it.)
- #110
Director David Fincher explains in the special promotional film This Is Zodiac (2007) that he spoke with Zodiac survivor Michael Renault Mageau, and that thanks to the information Mageau provided, Fincher found a way to stage the scene in which Mageau and his girlfriend are attacked.
- #111
At the beginning of the film there is a clock tower showing the time as 8:20. Later, when the possible source of the name and symbol Zodiac is revealed in a watch advertisement, the time shown in the ad is 8:20.
- #112
Arthur Leigh Allen is played by John Carroll Lynch. On October 6, 1969, the real Arthur Leigh Allen was interviewed by the Vallejo Police Department. The detective's name was John Lynch.
- #113
(At about forty-three minutes) The theme music in the newsroom scene is the music used by National Nine News (Australia) in the 1980s and 1990s.
- #114
Bob Vaughan, whom Graysmith follows home after meeting him outside the theater, was Captain Ken Narlow's real favorite suspect. Initially, fingering the theater projectionist was a way to add Vaughan, another major suspect, to the story, which also involved Graysmith. Both Graysmith and the SFPD later surmised that Vaughan's handwriting and background were used by Zodiac as a way to mislead police in his letters.
- #115
Although Callahan's Diner was a set built for the film, the Callahan's Diner logo and window lettering are the same as those used by the real Callahan's Diner at 1213 Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. It is likely that members of the film's cast and/or crew were familiar with the Santa Monica restaurant and used it as an art model for the San Francisco area. The Dirty Harry (1971) reference inherent in the diner's name may have been an added bonus.
- #116
In the overhead shot of the Transamerica Pyramid's initial construction, the "box" foundation is completely devoid of any piles or columns. Unlike most conventional high-rise foundations, the Pyramid was uniquely built without any piles driven into bedrock. The building's weight actually rests on the trusses of the first two levels, and the trusses themselves rest on this "box."
- #117
The terrifying basement was inspired by Dermot Mulroney's actual basement. The production team recreated it because "it had these concrete foundation pieces placed with a walkway that made you feel like you were walking through a tunnel."
- #118
(About fourteen minutes later) The bar Paul Avery frequents in the film is called Morti's. Mortis means death in Latin.
- #119
When the suspect killer Arthur Leigh Allen is brought in for questioning in the film, a title appears on screen: SEPT. 14, 1972. After he is released due to insufficient evidence, Inspector David Toschi attends a SPECIAL SCREENING - SFPD of DIRTY HARRY in the marquee of the NORTH POINT THEATRE. DIRTY HARRY premiered on December 22, 1971. In reality, a worldwide gala charity performance was held for the San Francisco Police Activities League, most likely a few days before the December 22 opening.
- #120
There is a deliberate anachronism. When Melanie orders penne alla vodka at dinner, the dish had not been invented until the 1980s. Fincher knew it was wrong but said, "being a gourmand, I let it slide."
- #121
Many of the film's more striking images, such as the rocket explosions in the opening scene, the shot looking at the foggy traffic from the Golden Gate Bridge, and the overhead tracking shot of the taxi, were created on computers. The accelerated construction of the Transamerica Pyramid was done using 2D and 3D digital mattes.
- #122
Toschi's wife says she is putting on "the Folgers," meaning making coffee. A month before that scene takes place, Abigail Folger (whose grandfather founded Folgers Coffee), Voytek Frykowski, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were killed by members of Charles Manson's "family."
- #123
The real bar refused to be featured. The tavern where reporters hung out would not allow its name to be used because the film depicts cocaine use.
- #124
Zodiac called lawyer Melvin Belli a week before Christmas and told him he had to kill because "today is my birthday." After learning that Arthur Leigh Allen was born on December 18, Robert Graysmith concluded that Allen was Zodiac. Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Graysmith in the film, was born on December 19.
- #125
The character Mike Majeu is mocked by Darlene on July 4 for being cold. July nighttime temperatures in Vallejo average below 50.
- #126
In the scene at the hardware store where Graysmith confronts him, the prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen wears a badge with the misspelled name 'Lee'. Presumably, as director, David Fincher wanted to avoid reminding viewers of Hitchcock's 'Psycho' through his star Janet Leigh and scenes also set in a hardware store.
Behind the Scenes (2)
- #127
In his notes for the updated version of his book "Zodiac," author and set consultant Robert Graysmith recounts that during one of the multiple takes of the scene in which Mark Ruffalo's detective finds a squirrel in Arthur Leigh Allen's refrigerator, a photo of cinematographer Harris Savides with a sunburn on his forehead was placed inside the refrigerator. Ruffalo carried on with the scene perfectly well, and David Fincher said: "That's a damned good acting. I really believe that you saw a squirrel in there."
- #128
Robert Downey Jr.'s four-straw trick was shot 26 times. Downey showed Fincher the trick and asked to perform it in the bar scene. He had to make 26 attempts to get it right for the film.
Characters & Cast (5)
- #129
The shooting script was 200 pages long. To avoid the problems such a long script could cause with running time, director David Fincher decided to ask the cast to speak faster.
- #130
Anthony Edwards was cast as Armstrong because David Fincher wanted him played by a completely upright person. Fincher already knew him, not so much from his work on ER (1994) as from being his neighbor.
- #131
The two leads, Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, do not share a scene until thirty-two minutes and thirty-seven seconds into the film.
- #132
Although Callahan's Diner is a set built for the film, the Callahan's Diner logo and window lettering are the same as those used by Callahan's Diner at 1213 Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. It is likely that members of the film's cast and/or crew were familiar with the Santa Monica restaurant and used it as an art model for the San Francisco area. The Dirty Harry (1971) reference inherent in the diner's name may have been an added bonus.
- #133
John Getz has several scenes as newspaper editor Templeton Peck. That is the name of the character Dirk Benedict played in The A-Team.
Easter Eggs & References (3)
- #134
Inspector Dave Toschi refers to Robert Graysmith as Dirty Harry. This is a nod to the real-life Inspector David Toschi, whose personal style influenced Clint Eastwood's character Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971).
- #135
As in director David Fincher's earlier film Seven (1995), a suspect is partly traced through library books the killer is suspected of having borrowed.
- #136
(About forty-four minutes in) Television host Jim Dunbar mentions that Melvin Belli appeared on Star Trek (1966) in the A.M. San Francisco scene. Belli guest-starred in And the Children Shall Lead (1968), first broadcast on October 11, 1968.
Deeper Meaning (6)
- #137
In the film, Graysmith mentions that Toschi also carried his gun like Bullitt. Avery says that Bullitt took this from Toschi, whose performance inspired Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1968).
- #138
Throughout the film's score, a single trumpet playing a four-note motif can often be heard in many scenes, serving as a tribute to American composer Charles Ives's aptly titled piece "The Unanswered Question."
- #139
Robert Graysmith's decryption of the Zodiac's second cipher (containing 340 characters) is in fact incorrect and was rejected by the FBI as invalid. The cipher was finally broken in December 2020 by an international team of three amateur cryptographers, a computer scientist and a software developer, with the help of modern computing resources that did not exist in 1969-70. The decrypted message offered no useful clue to the Zodiac's identity. Because of deliberate or accidental errors introduced during encryption, the cipher proved extremely difficult to solve.
- #140
Near the end of the film there is a shelf filled with copies of Graysmith's book titled 'Zodiac.' This is the real book published by original author, source and technical consultant Robert Graysmith about his search for the Zodiac, which was available for purchase.
- #141
At the start of the film there is a clock tower showing the time as 8:20. Later, when a watch advertisement reveals the possible source of the Zodiac name and symbol, the watch shown in the ad reads 8:20.
- #142
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the scene at the hardware store where Graysmith confronts him, the prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen wears a badge with the misspelled name 'Lee.' Possibly, as director, David Fincher wanted to avoid reminding viewers of Hitchcock's 'Psycho' through his star Janet Leigh and scenes also set in a hardware store.
Career & Awards (1)
- #143
In the updated version of his book "Zodiac," Robert Graysmith predicted that Jake Gyllenhaal would receive an Oscar nomination for his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). At the time he wrote this, Gyllenhaal had already been cast in Zodiac when Brokeback was released in 2005.
Life & Family (1)
- #144
David Fincher recalled how, as a child, he came home from school one day after noticing that his bus was being followed by a police car. His father answered matter-of-factly: "Oh yes. There's a serial killer who killed four or five people, calls himself the Zodiac, and has threatened to get a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus and then shoot the children as they come off the bus."
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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