The Matrix’s iconic title sequences are made up of falling “digital rain”, which, upon closer inspection, was actually thousands of lines of binary code.
Until now, I always assumed this code must have represented lines from the film’s script, long strings of complex multiplication or, indeed, nothing more than random number sequences.
However, it turns out that they’re actually not random in the slightest, but are made up of something I could never have predicted.
Production designer Simon Whiteley, who was the creator of this code, spoke to CNet about the creation and why it was included.
He said: “I like to tell everybody that The Matrix’s code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes. Without that code, there is no Matrix.”
The recipes in questions actually came from his wife’s cookbooks, he’d scanned them for the codes to make up the falling rain.
Wild.
It turns out, Simon will never divulge this information.
Speaking to Wired, he said: “I’ve been kind of not wanting to tell anyone what the recipe book is, partly because that’s the last bit of magic.”
He did, however, give some very small clues.
“It’s not actually a book,” he said.
“It’s a magazine, but it’s called a book. It’s something most Japanese people would’ve heard of or have on their bookshelf.”
According to Wired, even Japanese speakers couldn’t lift the recipe straight from the film because the digital rain is written in code.
Simon explained to Wired that sushi recipes are usually written in hiragana and kanji, which are syllabic and logographic characters, respectively.
However, Simon instead opted to stylise The Matrix’s code as katakana, which are syllabic characters used for spelling foreign words.
Hilariously, Simon told Wired that his wife believes that they’re either ramen noodles or teriyaki sauce.
I guess we’ll never know.
