15 Things You Might Not Know About Jordan Peele's "Nope"

The real story of "Gordy" is just as heart-wrenching.

WARNING: This post contains major spoilers for Nope.

I, like many other Jordan Peele fans, went to see Nope last weekend, and as I do with movies I enjoy, I started doing research on it afterward.

Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com

Here are some of the most interesting things I found out:

1. The title Nope is not an acronym, as fans suspected.

Universal Pictures / Everett Collection

When the first poster was released, featuring a string of flags dangling from a cloud and the title in all caps, some people thought "NOPE" might be an acronym for "Not of Planet Earth."

Jordan Peele revealed the true meaning behind the name at CinemaCon earlier this year: 

"The title speaks to the idea of the audience reacting to what they're thinking and feeling in the theater. When you tell people it's a scary movie a lot of time they say 'NOPE.' So I want to acknowledge those people with the title and bring them in. This is about the person who thinks they don't love the horror movie. To show them that maybe they do."

2. Jordan Peele wrote the role of OJ specifically with his former Get Out leading man, Daniel Kaluuya, in mind.

Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

Describing the character as "a humble man destined for an epic and otherworldly confrontation, Peele said of the actor: "Daniel’s craft is on a different level, but it's his warmth that grounds audiences even during points of absolute madness. You may be watching a nightmare, but when he’s on screen, at least you’ve got your brother with you, and that’s all you need."

3. Agua Dulce is a real place in California and is home to multiple ranches frequently used in film and TV.

Ianmcdonnell / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Located in Los Angeles County, it's considered a "census-designated place" and has a population of about 3,500.

While it's common for movies and TV shows not to be shot where they actually take place, Nope was filmed in the Agua Dulce Desert. The Jupiter's Claim theme park was built right in the desert.

Agua Dulce is also home to the Sweetwater Movieland Ranch and the Agua Dulce Movie Ranch.

4. You can visit Jupiter's Claim.

Valerie Macon / AFP via Getty Images

If you watched Nope and thought, Man, I really want to spend a day at Jupiter's Claim, you can — Universal Studios reconstructed the park as part of its studio tour on the Hollywood backlot.

5. You can also visit the Jupiter's Claim website and follow it on social media.

Universal Pictures / Via instagram.com

Universal built out a whole interactive website and social media profiles to advertise the fictionalized version of the theme park a few weeks before the movie premiered, and if you happened to stumble upon it without knowing it wasn't real, you'd probably think you could actually spend a day there.

6. Fry's Electronics was a real company.

Richard Brown / Alamy Stock Photo

Another thing movies and TV shows do a lot is feature fake brands as opposed to real ones. As many Californians will likely know, Fry's Electronics, where OJ and Emerald meet Angel, however, actually was a real company with multiple locations throughout the state. It closed down in early 2021, and since filming didn't start until that summer, it's unclear whether any of the locations were used during filming. The Burbank location did feature a sci-fi theme, complete with a "crashed" flying saucer sticking out of the storefront, just like the one in the movie.

7. Jordan Peele and his team consulted with bonafide jellyfish expert, Professor John Dabiri, about the design of Jean Jacket.

Angel_nt / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Dabiri is a Nigerian-American aeronautics engineer and the Centennial Chair Professor at CalTech, and the director of the Biological Propulsion Laboratory. He is also known for his research on the hydrodynamics of jellyfish propulsion.

8. The tragic story of Gordy the chimp mirrors a real incident.

Andyworks / Getty Images

If Gordy's rampage on the set of Gordy's Home! seemed familiar, it's because something very similar happened in 2009, when a chimp named Travis attacked a woman and left her severely disfigured.

Travis had been taken from his mother when he was a baby and sold to Sandra and Jerome Herold, a couple in Connecticut, who raised him to wear clothes and eat meals at the dining table with them. Like the fictional Gordy, Travis appeared in TV shows and commercials.

In February of 2009, Travis mauled Charla Nash, a friend of Sandra Herold's. Police, after responding to a 911 call from Herold, shot and ultimately killed Travis, who was still enraged and attempted to enter a police car when they arrived. Nash survived, and over the next three days spent over seven hours in surgery to treat the injuries to her face and hands.

9. Jordan Peele might have been thinking about Nope for nearly a decade.

Jordan Peele @JordanPeele

Dreamt that a baby chimp attacked some people then ran to me and hugged me all scared. I woke up with tears streaming down my face. #bruh

09:14 PM - 30 Nov 2014

Twitter: @JordanPeele

Back in 2014, he tweeted that he dreamed about witnessing a chimp attack, and as the New York Post pointed out, it sounds an awful lot like what happened to Steven Yeun's character, Jupe, in the film.

10. Terry Notary, the actor who portrayed Gordy via motion capture, has played another chimp in the past.

20th Century Fox

He was Rocket in the Planet of the Apes trilogy in the 2010s.

11. The two-second clip of a Black man on a horse really was the first example of a motion picture.

Universal Pictures

As Vulture pointed out, the movie only takes liberties with the man's identity, which is no longer known. 

12. This character originally wasn't going to survive.

Universal Pictures

UFO expert/conspiracy theorist, Angel, managed to make it through a Jean Jacket attack by the skin of his teeth, but that wasn't always the case.

Brandon Perea, who plays Angel, told SyFy that his character was set to die in not only the first draft of the script but the second draft as well. 

"Jordan was definitely in a mode of let's wreck these people," Perea said. "And I'm like, 'No, man. Don't wreck me, though.' Then I talked to some of the studio heads and they were like, 'There's no way we could kill Angel, man. We needed Angel!'"

13. The T-shirts seen in the movie were no accident.

Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

Costume designer Alex Bovaird told Entertainment Weekly that the graphic T-shirts seen on our trio of heroes featured some of the bands Jordan Peel listened to as a teen, like The Jesus Lizard, Wipers, and Rage.

"They're Angel's band T-shirts," Bovaird explained. "And the methodology of that was he wears his favorite band T-shirts now, but these were things he was listening to a couple years ago. His band T-shirts are either post-punk or proto-grunge. And again, there's a bit of personal stuff going on there, because Jordan and [producer] Ian [Cooper]... they're making a movie that they want to see, and so sometimes that pops into the costumes. As well as Angel's the kind of character who likes obscure bands."

14. Jupe almost had a very different look.

Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

Bovaird also revealed that Jupe nearly didn't sport his iconic cowboy look, but a hoodie instead.

"There was just a different way around it, where he's not in the costume and he's not trying, and he's not presenting himself and it was sort of a run-through, and maybe when he's at Jupiter's Claim, he's not dressing up. There was a whole other direction, which was anti what we did. I'm glad we came back around to doing something a little nuts."

15. We might not have seen the last of Jean Jacket's kind.

Universal Pictures

If Perea gets his wish, Nope will get a sequel. In the same interview with SyFy, he said he doesn't think the story is over. 

"For how heroic everything kind of seemed at the end, I'm like there's no way they leave the heroes like this," he said. "This is just the start of something new. And that's why I really wanted to survive because I knew that Jordan was about to do some craziness and craft some new worlds. I want to be a part of it as long as I can, so hopefully that we get to do it again."

What did you think of Nope? Sound off in the comments.