Trivia: During Lucy's final transformation sequence, her consciousness starts traveling through time by millions of years. At one point, Lucy pauses in time to observe and interact with an ape-like creature, reaching out to touch its fingertip. Although not expressly stated or explained in the film, this ape-like creature was what scientists today classify as Australopithecus afarensis, the earliest identifiable ancestor of humankind. The first fossils of Australopithecus afarensis were determined to be from a female who was christened "Lucy" by scientists.
Trivia: Near the end, as Lucy starts travelling backwards in time, she pauses in various periods of Earth's natural history. However, after she travels all the way back to the age of the Dinosaurs (at least 65 million years ago), she inexplicably travels forward in time by about 60 million years and meets an Australopithecine, one of humankind's earliest ancestors (that lived around 4 million years ago). She then resumes traveling backward in time to the beginning of the universe.
Trivia: Writer/director Luc Besson has openly stated that he knows the film's conceit - the idea that human's only use 10% of the brain - is an old wives' tale with no basis in fact. He simply went along with this popular myth because he thought it sounded like a fun set-up for an action-film.
Trivia: Part of the inspiration for the film was the real-life "Lucy" - the skeleton of an Australopithecus Afarensis that was discovered in 1974. Director Luc Besson marveled at how the brain of animals like Lucy had evolved into a modern human brain, which gave him the idea for a film in which a modern human's brain similarly evolves into something else far more advanced. He eventually combined this with the popular myth that humans only use 10% of their brain in order to create a bit of backstory. He spent nearly a decade working on the script on-and-off between other projects until he was satisfied and moved forward with production.
Trivia: Famed director Luc Besson's most profitable film by a wide margin - bringing in over $450 million worldwide against a $40 million budget - nearly twice what his next-biggest hit, "The Fifth Element," brought in at the box office.
