15 Things You Didnt Know about The Lord of the Rings

July 21, 2016

Now that the Wind's of Winter have arrived and the sixth season of Game of Thrones has concluded, many of us are left wondering....well what now.

In order to fill the ever growing gaping void, I recently took to re-watching the Lord of the Ring's trilogy extended versions, and frankly every time I watch those movies, I feel like I find a scene that I hadn't noticed before. Even though I have watched all 3 at least 6 times.

It's the magic of Tolkien, who somehow created a world so diverse that frankly it's all kinda mind boggling. So for those of you who are planning on jumping back into Middle Earth over a lazy weekend, here's 15 interesting facts you may want to take with you.

Tolkien sold the film rights to The Lord of the Rings in 1969 for £10,000, which is now about R158042...pretty much nothing compared to what the Trilogy grossed.

The Return of the King has the highest recorded kill count in a movie, coming in at 836 bodies.

Christopher Lee, aka Saruman, has released numerous metal albums. It was also he’s ultimate dream to play Gandalf in the LOTR movies. However he was given the part of Saruman instead, because the directors thought he was too old to handle the fighting scenes. He’s also the only cast member to have met Tolkien meeting him by chance at a bar in Oxford. #badass

Saruman

Tolkien thought Sam was the “chief hero” of the LOTR story. Glad to know I wasn’t the only one who taught Frodo was a whiny brat.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf fights the Balrog, Ian McKellen was actually acting to a ping pong ball. Pretty Impressive considering how awkward that must have been.
Tolkien’s gravestone is engraved with “Beren,” and his wife’s with “Luthien,” after the love story of a mortal man and immortal elf maiden.

The ring doesn’t just make it's bearer invisible. It shifts their bodies from the physical world into an unseen spirit world. Sauron was a Maia like Gandalf, a sort of demi God who inhabited both the physical and spiritual worlds, and thus had no need to transport to a plane he already lived in.
Legolas and Gimli’s bromance was forged during the war, and literally lasted for eternity. After Aragorn dies, Legolas builds a boat and sets sail for the Undying Lands where the elves and all living ring bearers have gone. There, mortals achieve immortality. When Legolas leaves, he takes Gimli with him.

The Elvish language Sindarin, J.R.R. Tolkien used for The Lord of the Rings, was entirely unique, and contained around 25000 words.
The Lord of the Rings novels were written as if they were translated to English after the fact, and the original common tongue of the books is called Westron.
An International Astronomical Union regulation states that all mountains on Titan, one of the moon's of Saturn, must be named after the mountains from The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien did not want the third Lord of the Rings book to be called ‘Return of the King’ as was instructed by his publisher, as he felt it revealed too much about the story.
In the book, the length of time from when Frodo first gets the ring to when he actually sets out on his adventure is 17 years, not a few weeks like the movie portrays.
Aragorn and Arwen are cousins… Well kinda. They are cousins sixty-three times removed. Aragorn is a descendant of Elros, who was Elrond’s brother. Elrond is Arwen's father. Elrond and Elros were part of a race called “halfelves,” which gave them the power to choose between elven immortality and human lives. Elros picked life as a mortal man, while Elrond decided to become a flowery elf. This is why Aragorn got to live way longer than normal men.
No one knows Legolas’s Hair Colour. Yeah, Legolas's dad Thranduil had beautiful golden hair as specified in the books and as portrayed in the Hobbit films, but Legolas's appearance is never fully detailed.