Everything Everywhere All at Once: 17 Interesting Facts

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an American Independent film that was released in 2022. The film bears the creative imprint of writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

Collaborating with Anthony and Joe Russo alongside Jonathan Wang in production, this cinematic piece ingeniously weaves together an assortment of genres and cinematic styles.

Within its framework, one can discern traces of absurdist fiction, comedy-drama, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts, immigrant narrative, and even elements of animation.

Everything Everywhere All at Once features performances by Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis.

In the film, an aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what’s important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes.

There’s probably a lot that you don’t know about this film, but today my aim is to change that.

Here are 17 Facts You Might Not Know About Everything Everywhere All at Once

1. All the visual effects for this film were done by 9 people (including the two directors). The majority of the shots were done by a core group of 5 people. None of the visual effects team went to school for it. They were all friends who taught themselves with tutorials they found online for free.

2. To keep plot details under wraps before the trailer was released, the IMDb synopsis read, “It’s about a 55-year-old Chinese woman trying to finish her taxes.”

3. Ke Huy Quan appeared in Goonies and Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom in the 1980s. His role in Everything Everywhere All at Once was his first major role in a film in 20 years. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this film in 2023.

4. In Everything Everywhere All at Once Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) speaks to her father in Cantonese, but she speaks to Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) in Mandarin, showing cultural differences in their upbringing. Evelyn speaks to Joy in Mandarin and English, while Joy answers back in English and bad Chinese. Neither one finds the words to express their ideas clearly to the other, keeping them divided.

5. Michelle Yeoh (who won the Oscar for Best Actress for this film in 2023) has said that the film was completely out of her comfort zone: “I was suddenly doing comedy, physical comedy, action, horror, every single genre all packed into one, and jumping in and out of it. It was such a gratifying experience. I’ve waited a long time to receive a script like that. Because, as you get older, the box gets smaller and smaller.”

6, James Hong was 91 years old during filming, and he had five stand-ins to perform the various action beats. One stand-in volunteered to shave his head just for the honor of doubling Hong.

7. Ke Huy Quan delivers a reference to his Indiana Jones character Short Round when yelling at Evelyn to “snap out of it!” This scene plays out exactly the same in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (when Indy is under a spell by Mola Ram).

8. In one universe that was not used in the Everything Everywhere All at Once, Evelyn is a piece of sentient spaghetti being cooked in a pot. She has a ‘son’ who is a piece of elbow macaroni eager to be the one thrown against the wall as a test of sticky done-ness, as this will show he has become a man.

9. In various Chinese-speaking markets, the movie goes by different titles. In Mainland China, the title (“shun4 xi1 quan2 yu3 zhou4”) translates as “In an Instant, the Entire Universe.” In Hong Kong, the title (“kei4 ji6 neoi5 haap6 waan4 gau3 jyu5 zau6”) is a play on words, which can be translated as “Mystical Woman Warrior Saves the Universe(s),” and “Mystical Woman Warrior Fucks Up the Universe(s).”

In Taiwan, the title (“ma1 de duo1 chong2 yu3 zhou4”) is also a play on words, and can be translated as either “Mom’s Multiple Universes” or “So Fucking Many Universes.” The Chinese title as seen in the movie’s title card and poster is actually (“tian1 ma3 xing2 kong1”), which is an idiom that roughly means “wild and unrestrained imagination.”

10. With its seven Oscar wins, including Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once became the most awarded Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire 14 years earlier.

11. The appearance of Jamie Lee Curtis’ character Deirdre Beaubeirdre is based on a stock photo of an IRS worker.

12. Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s budget is commonly estimated to be $25 million, which is a shockingly low amount. However, this estimate is still too high. During an interview at SBIFF Cinema Society, producer Jonathan Wang revealed that the entire movie was shot with a budget of only $14.3 million. To date it has raked in $141 million at the box office.

13. Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian woman to win Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Previously, Merle Oberon was also nominated, though she purposely hid her Asian identity.

14. The film was shot before the COVID-19 pandemic, but features characters wearing facemasks and using hand sanitizer because they’re often part of Asian communities.

15. Everything Everywhere All at Once was shot in only 38 days.

16. Quan (who worked as a stunt co-ordinator in several films during his hiatus from acting) did most of his stunts himself. Yeoh (a veteran action star) insisted on performing all the stunts herself with the help of a stunt co-ordinator to ensure they were executed flawlessly. After working so closely with her, Timothy Eulich, Yeoh’s stunt co-ordinator, praised her highly.

17. “Your clothes never wear as well the next day, your hair never falls in quite the same way,” is both a line Alpha Waymond says to Evelyn and a line from the Nine Days song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl).”

The whole song is a guy talking about how he loves a girl despite her sadness, which is pretty much how Waymond feels about Evelyn. The song can also be heard briefly in the office sex dungeon.

Well, there you have it, 17 Interesting Facts You Might Not Have Known About Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Check out the trailer for the film below:

If I’ve left out something important, feel free to comment below.

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