13 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Your Favorite Action Movies That'll Change The Way You Watch Them

From lost fingertips to ripped-out eyelashes — this post has it all!

1. John Wick (2014) was originally titled Scorn, and the only reason the title was changed at all was because Keanu Reeves kept remembering it wrong.

Lionsgate

"The only reason it's called John Wick is because Keanu kept referring to it as John Wick [in interviews]," said co-creator Derek Kolstad. "Marketing was like, 'Dude, that's $4 [million] to $5 million dollars in free advertising so far, so it's John Wick instead of Scorn.' I can't imagine it being Scorn now."

2. Inspired by Denzel Washington's decision to always wear his scarring makeup to better connect to his character in Glory (1989), Michael B. Jordan elected to wear Killmonger's scars all through shooting Black Panther (2018), even when they were not visible.

TriStar Pictures, Marvel Studios

“I remember hearing stories about you and I heard stories that when you were huddled around the campfire in that film, you weren’t supposed to be shirtless but you still had the scars put on your back, so you could feel it, so you could know that’s what your character’s been through,” Jordan said at the 47th AFI Life Achievement Gala while presenting the honor to Washington. "I tell you right now tonight, brother, that’s the only reason why Killmonger — when I played that role — I had those scars, even when I wasn’t shirtless, because of you, so I want to say thank you for that.”

3. Quentin Tarantino put shooting Kill Bill (2003) on hold after Uma Thurman got pregnant, refusing to recast her.

Miramax Films

“She got pregnant, and I was like, 'Okay, do I wait or do I not?' But I can honestly tell you that I didn’t have a choice,” Tarantino said. “Yes, this is my samurai movie; yes, this is my badass chick movie; yes, this is my spaghetti western and my comic book movie...but it’s also my Josef von Sternberg movie, and if Josef von Sternberg is getting ready to make Morocco and Marlene Dietrich gets pregnant, he waits for Dietrich!”

4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) is literally the reason why the PG-13 rating exists.

Paramount Pictures

"I remember calling Jack Valenti [the president of the Motion Picture Association] and suggesting to him that we needed a rating between R and PG, because so many films were falling into a netherworld of, you know, unfairness," Steven Spielberg said. "I suggested, 'Let’s call it PG-13 or PG-14, depending on how you want to design the slide rule' and Jack came back to me and said, 'We’ve determined that PG-13 would be the right age for that temperature of movie.' So, I’ve always been very proud that I had something to do with that rating!"

5. The delicious-looking egg sandwich in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) was actually made using duck eggs — not chicken eggs — because Margot Robbie is allergic to chicken egg whites.

Warner Bros.

"There's a protein in chicken egg whites that gives people migraines, and I get them," Robbie said. "The prop people were like, 'Why would you write into the script that you're eating egg sandwiches if you can't eat eggs?' and I was like, 'It didn't occur to me at the time!' So we had to make them with duck eggs. It was very elaborate."

6. Frank Sinatra was the studio's first choice to play John McClane in Die Hard (1988).

20th Century Fox

The role of John McClane was originally offered to Sinatra, who was 73 YEARS OLD at the time. Why was he offered the role, you ask? Well, Die Hard is actually based on a book that follows a detective named John Leland titled Nothing Lasts Forever, which is a sequel to the book The Detective. A movie version of The Detective was made starring Sinatra in 1968. Sinatra turned down the role reprisal so, for the purpose of continuity, the movie changed the characters last name to "McClane."

7. All of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's eyelashes were pulled out while shooting Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) after a plaster replica mishap.

Warner Bros.

"They had to put a cast over my head, it was a very weird, surreal moment, and when they took it off it pulled out all my eyelashes," Huntington-Whiteley said. "Because the — not wax — but the cast had got into my eyelashes and pulled them all out. So for about three months, I had no eyelashes. That's probably the biggest makeup or beauty fail and it was quite painful, it was quite traumatic as well."

8. Chris Evans almost had a superhero cameo in Deadpool 2 (2018) — but not as Captain America.

20th Century Fox

Writer Rhett Reese revealed that during the early stages of the script, they kicked around multiple end credits scene ideas and one included another multi-superhero actor in his less beloved role, similar to Ryan Reynolds with Green Lantern vs. Deadpool. "There were different codas kicked around. There were more X-Force interviews that were talked about," Reese said. "One was Chris Evans as Human Torch. We never got [far enough to ask him]. Someone had the idea we actually did, and we thought that was better. But we definitely had a lot more X-Force interviews with bizarre, random people coming in to interview."

9. Daniel Craig sliced off the tip of his finger while filming Quantum of Solace (2008) and, in true James Bond fashion, didn't think it was THAT big a deal.

Sony Pictures Releasing

“It wasn’t as extreme as all that. I was bleeding a lot. I had to get it cauterized," Craig said. "Filming stopped and everybody went, ‘Oh God! He sliced the end of his finger off!’ They went looking for it, but couldn't find it.”

10. Michelle Yeoh tore her ACL during a stunt gone wrong in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), but continued to perform her own stunts.

Sony Pictures Classics

"The first action sequence was very intensive. I was doing a forward jump kick that I've done thousands of times, but I had a mishap landing. My knee just gave out," Yeoh said. "I thought, 'I'm fine — I can keep going.' You have to give it your all because celluloid is forever, but I knew it was bad when I turned left and my leg kept swinging right." After she was rushed from the shooting location in China to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, it was confirmed that she'd torn her ACL.

11. The title for Independence Day (1996) was literally chosen as a marketing ploy to force the studio to release the film during the summer.

20th Century Fox

"I told our agent we wanted to do [an alien movie] and he said, 'Forget about it, Tim Burton is doing Mars Attacks!' and I said to Dean [Devlin, cowriter], 'We can’t do our film after a parody comes out.' We had to beat him to it," cowriter/director Roland Emmerich said. "If it came out on the Fourth of July weekend, we would beat Mars Attacks!, which was coming out in August. So we wrote the concept around the release date. Dean said, 'Let’s just call it Independence Day; we can come up with something better later.'”

12. Henry Cavill improvised the now-iconic "arm reloading" moment in Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018).

Paramount Pictures

“That was an improv by Henry Cavill on the day... I don’t even think I was aware of it until we were editing the scene," writer/director Christopher McQuarrie said. "I don’t know if you’ve ever watched those reaction videos of people watching trailers, but go watch some reaction videos of people watching the Fallout trailer. You’ve got Tom [Cruise] flying helicopters and falling off of mountains and smashing through walls and crashing motorcycles — and the single biggest reaction is Henry Cavill reloading his arms."

13. And finally, Sigourney Weaver actually made that "impossible" over-the-shoulder basketball shot in Alien Resurrection (1997).

20th Century Fox

In the script for the fourth Alien movie, Weaver was required to throw a basketball behind her, without looking, and get it into the net. The production team had already planned on using some CGI for the trick, but they still needed to film a shot of her throwing it behind her. The thing is...she ended up making the basket FOR REAL on her first try.

Do you know any other action movie behind-the-scenes facts? Share your expert knowledge in the comments below! Teach us something!