Trivia for
Time Bandits (1981) More at IMDbPro »

• Young Craig Warnock, who played Kevin, won the role after a wide search for the right child actor. An agent had seen Warnock's brother and sent him to an audition. That Craig went with him was merely a coincidence. Director Terry Gilliam, however, took more interest in Craig than his sibling, noting that the young man seemed rather intelligent yet aloof and quiet, as opposed to the stereotypical "cute" little boy.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Terry Gilliam] [burst] horse and rider from closet
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Terry Gilliam] [bookends] begins and ends with the map.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Terry Gilliam] [cages] This film uses cages identical to the cage Jill is imprisoned in, in Giliam's film Brazil (1985).
  
  
• The suit worn by Ralph Richardson is his own.
  
  
• Ruth Gordon was cast as Mrs. Ogre but was injured before production. Katherine Helmond was originally slated to play the role in heavy make-up to look like her husband, but then decided it would be funnier if Mrs. Ogre was an ordinary person. Terry Gilliam agreed.
  
  
• According to a novel based on the screenplay, Kevin's last name is Lotterby and he's eleven years old.
  
  
• Jonathan Pryce was offered the role of the Evil Genius but was unavailable owing to his commitment to Loophole (1981).
  
  
• The cowboys, Greek archers, tank, spaceship (Micronauts Mobile Exploration Lab), and all of the attackers that fight 'Evil' at the end are actually the counterparts of the same toys seen in Kevin's room; in some shots as Kevin runs through Evil's fortress, giant 'Lego' blocks can clearly seen as part of the fortress itself.
  
  
• According to the DVD commentary, Terry Gilliam shot the film in low camera angles throughout in order to give the audience the perspective of a dwarf or a child, the heroes of ‘Time Bandits’.
  
  
• On the wall of Kevin's bedroom can be seen a drawing of Dr. Bertram X. Fegg,a character created by Michael Palin and Terry Jones for their "Dr.Fegg" books, drawn by Martin Honeysett.
  
  
• On the Special Edition DVD Terry Gilliam explains why Marcus Powell is still credited as Horseflesh, even though he is apparently never seen. As it turns out, Horseflesh can be seen standing next to David Warner's Evil as he gazes into the bowl of water to track the Time Bandits at one point in the film.
  
  
• In Anne Rice's third novel in her Vampire Chronicles, "The Queen of the Damned", Daniel (the interviewer from the first novel/film) and vampire Armand see "Time Bandits" in the cinema together. Armand finds the scene where the Time Bandits sing for Napoleon in the battle-ravaged theatre so funny that he laughs uncontrollably every time he sees it and goes back repeatedly to re-watch it.
  
  
• In the unusual trailer for this film, the announcer says, "You went to 'Star Wars' for the droids" as Kenny Baker, who played droid R2D2 in Star Wars (1977), runs across the screen with the other Bandits.
  
  
• In the original script, King Agamemnon was introduced as: "The warrior took off his helmet, revealing someone that looks exactly like Sean Connery, or an actor of equal but cheaper stature." To Terry Gilliam's surprise, the script ended up in Connery's hands. He expressed interest in the part and his agent approached them for the role.
  
  
• Whilst filming the sequence in Sherwood Forest, in which the Time Bandits inadvertently crash into Vincent (Michael Palin) and Pansy's (Shelley Duvall) carriage, Terry Gilliam had scaffolding built for the actors to jump off. When directing the scene, Gilliam instructed that they were to jump in such a way as to land around Palin and Duvall without actually falling on to them. To better illustrate what he meant, Gilliam then climbed to the top of the scaffolding and without hesitation jumped off, only to plummet directly on top of Shelley Duvall.
  
  
• According to Terry Gilliam, David Rappaport believed he was given his part for his acting ability alone, without size being a contributing factor, and as a result, did not socialize with his co-stars. During the Invisible Barrier scene when the other bandits retaliate against Randall, it was basically the actors expressing their frustrations with Rappaport.
  
  
• In 1996, Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown collaborated on a script for Time Bandits 2, bringing back most of the original cast, with the exceptions of David Rappaport and Tiny Ross who had passed away a few years before, and owing to Jack Purvis being paralyzed from a car accident, his character was written to be in a similar state. But following the death of Purvis, the project was shelved indefinitely.
  
  
• The gold masks of Agamemnon's priests are replicas of a king's deathmask, found by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae in 1876, now on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
  
  

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