Battle Royale

Trivia: In the film, the two transfer students are Kiriyama, the silent killer, and Kawada, the winner of a previous Battle Royale. In the original novel, only Kawada was the transfer student; Kiriyama was in the same class selected for this game of death. He was the main antagonist.

Allister Cooper, 2011

Trivia: Because of the violent and controversial nature of the film, Toei refused to license it for North American distribution. It also rejected offers from North American companies who wanted to purchase the license of the film.

megamii

Trivia: www.br.com - emblazoned across the back of the studio during the instructional video - used to be the real website of British Rail, the UK national railway (pre-privatisation).

Moose

Trivia: The Japanese DVD features outtakes from the film. One of these shows that in one scene where a cooking pot is thrown at a girl, the pot actually did hit the actress and hurt her (although not badly). The shot where this happened does appear in the movie, but any sign of her having been hurt was edited out.

Moose

Trivia: In the bungalow, two female students, Hirono and Mitsuko, are having a beef. Hirono taunts Mitsuko, who loses patience and cries out, 'I've had it! Why does everyone gang up on me, what did I do!' In a website dedicated to the film, it states background information [most likely from the manga] that Mitsuko is the 'class slut', hence Hirono's accusations of Mitsuko stealing her boyfriend, among others, is justified.

Allister Cooper, 2011

Trivia: There is a persistent fallacy about this film that the cutesy announcer who describes the game says "Super Lucky" in classic anime-engrish when picking up an axe. She doesn't. The SUBTITLE reads "This is super lucky", but the announcer speaks an ordinary Japanese phrase.

Moose

Trivia: In the middle and near the end of the film, Kitano is seen and heard conversing with his daughter over the phone; that voice belongs to Maeda Ai, actual older sister of Maeda Aki, who plays Nanahara's girlfriend Noriko.

Allister Cooper, 2011

Trivia: In the manga, Utsumi Yukie is described as the class president, hence her reputation of the leader is obvious in the lighthouse scene. Lead character Nanahara Shuya, as the deleted scenes show, is the star basketball athlete, hence his popularity.

Allister Cooper, 2011

Revealing mistake: Many times throughout the movie, people are shot and they bleed, but their clothes don't have holes from where the bullets hit them. The most noticeable examples are when the teacher is shot at the end, and when the big gun fight between the girls breaks out in the lighthouse.

More mistakes in Battle Royale

Teacher Kitano: So today's lesson is, you kill each other off till there's only one left. Nothing's against the rules.

More quotes from Battle Royale

Question: I have heard the following story about this film: one of the assistant producers met with Quentin Tarantino. Quentin talked about how much he liked the film, and the producer asked him which bit he liked best. He replied that he liked the lighthouse scene the best, and the assistant producer laughed out loud, and said that the main producer would be amused to hear him say that - because he pinched the scene from Reservoir Dogs. Is this really true?

Moose

Chosen answer: Specific aspects of direction may be from Reservoir Dogs, but the scene itself plays out almost exactly the same as in the book.

More questions & answers from Battle Royale

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