21 Things About Stranger Things You Didn't Know

This series not only achieves greatness in throwback form, but also remains groundbreaking and fresh for a whole new generation of teens coming of age. Over the past few weeks, hordes of people who grew up in the 1980s started watching, or even binged all the way through the latest Netflix original to become a phenomenon, Stranger Things. The series has taken the world by storm! With heaps of 80s nostalgia in tow, the show not only brought back tons of visual elements and musical inspirations from the 80s, but also a familiar tone, style and storytelling that vanished once MTV brought reality TV into our lives in popular culture. Stranger Things is created by dynamic writing and directing team of brothers, Matt and Ross Duffer, and executive produced by Shawn Levy. The TV series is clearly a love letter and ode to the 80s classics like Goonies, E.T., The Thing and Sixteen Candles (just to name of few references). The show is set in 1983 Indiana where a young boy disappears into thin air and as family and authorities search for answers, they are drawn deep into a strange mystery involving top secret government experiments and cover-ups, supernatural forces and a very abnormal young girl with superpowers.

Here are some fun facts about Stranger Things you probably didn’t know: (WARNING: Spoilers Ahead)

• The composers of the Stranger Things soundtrack (Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon) are two members of an Austin synth band called SURVIVE. The two musicians quit their day jobs in order to work on the show.
• To promote the series, the Duffers edited a mock “trailer” of combined clips from over 25 feature films, including E.T., Super 8, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street.
• The title sequence was inspired by the work of Richard Greenberg, who designed a number of classic 80s title sequences (including Alien, Superman, and The Goonies).
• Millie Brown (the young girl who plays Eleven) and Charlie Heaton (who plays Jonathan) are both from the UK.
• Winona Ryder wanted her hairstyle to be like Meryl Streep’s hair in Silkwood.

• Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine have appeared together once before: in the music video for Roy Orbison’s A Love So Beautiful.
• Gaten Matarazzo's (Dustin) voice changed so much by the time production ended that the sound team was unable to use him for ADR (additional dialogue recording).
• Before the start of filming and writing the show, the writers all watched (or rewatched) a huge list of 80s films including Stand By Me, The Thing, and The Goonies.

• Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin) and Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas) have both acted on Broadway. Gaten played Gavroche in Les Miserables and Caleb played Young Simba in The Lion King. The two boys knew each other but they didn’t become close friends until after working on S​tranger Things.
• To help sell the show, the Duffer brothers created a ‘look book’ which was designed in the style of a vintage Stephen King novel.
• Although the show was shot digitally on the RED Dragon, a layer of real film grain was applied to help achieve a more vintage feel.
• In early drafts of the Stranger Things pilot, Eleven used her telekinetic powers to escape the facility. Instead, the Duffer brothers decided to tease out how powerful Eleven actually was and left the escape from the facility to the viewer's imagination.

• Caleb requested to wear a camouflage bandana in the show, so he wore it on the final three episodes of the series.
• The toddlers on set were very scared by the ‘monster’ but they were calmed when told he was just like the monsters from Monsters Inc.
• The Duffers had all the boys audition with scenes from Stand By Me.
• The Duffer brothers have a 30-page document about "the Upside Down," and we didn't even get hints at everything that's in it. According to Ross Duffer, "If there was going to be a Season 2, we would reveal more of that 30-page document, but we'd still want to keep it from the point of view of our original characters."

• The monster was achieved through a combination of prosthetics, animatronics, performance and CG.
• To get Millie (Eleven) to float in the kiddie pool, twelve hundred pounds of Epsom salt was dissolved into the water.
• Millie had to shave most of her hair off for the show and was terrified, the Duffers showed her how cool Charlize Theron looked in Mad Max: Fury Road after which Millie agreed to it.

Here it is!! The video of me getting my hair shaved for #StrangerThings. Enjoy!?? #buzzed pic.twitter.com/qFQWwib1ti

— Millie Bobby Brown (@milliebbrown) August 21, 2016

• Hopper’s trailer was purchased by the art department for only 1US Dollar.
• A dozen television networks rejected 32-year-old twins Matt and Ross Duffer's pitch for Stranger Things before Netflix said yes.

The way the first season was left implied that a second season was a-coming, not only did Detective Hopper leave an Eggo waffle (Eleven’s favourite food) out in the forest, but Will Byers coughed up something distinctly nasty in what is supposed to be a scene of happy resolve. Not sure about you, but no joyful moment in our lives involved coughing up a gross slug from a parallel universe.