Basically at the end when Cecil says “KLAATU BARADA NIKTO” I’m pretty sure that’s the name of three of the characters on the skiff scene in Return of the Jedi. And no, you don’t want to know how I know that.
So my question is, is there some independant source where both Cecil and good ol’ GL could have come up with this? Possibly more a GQ question, but it’s sort of a comment…
Oh, and does anyone know what Cecil meant by that, anyway?
I think this should clear things up. Here’s an entry from the “Trivia” section for Army of Darkness in the IMDb (http://us.imdb.com/Trivia?0106308):
>The magic words Ash must use to claim the Book of the Dead
>are “Klaatu, Barada, Nikto”, the same words used to
>command the robot Gort in Day the Earth Stood Still, The
>(1951).
MattTheCroc, thank you for including the link. But this moderator has many ways of increasing his post count! Hahahahaha.
First of all, yes, I do want to know where you found the information that three of the characters in “Return of the Jedi” were called Klaatu, Barada and Nikto. Some Star Wars trivia book?
If George Lucas did choose these names, I would say it’s a safe bet that he wanted to pay homage to a well-known science-fiction movie (The Day The Earth Stood Still).
It was a well-known science fiction short story before it was a movie. In the story, it’s made clear that Klaatu is the name of one of the aliens… I don’t remember a reference to Barada or Nikto, but it’s been a while since I read it.
Post-count padding is a game that all us moderators can play
Ohhhh, thank you, thank you, thank you Prefect, as soon as I read that column I KNEW I had heard KLAATU BARADA NIKTO before. Took me a few minutes to dig through the memory banks and realize it was in Army of Darkness (I thought I was the only one who bought that game! - great game by the way…) So with Cecil mentioning it, I was wondering where the terms came from.
Doh! I just re-read prefects link to the Army of Darkness tivia page. I was thinking it was a PC game. I’ve got that movie at home - I’ll have to check it tonight. I have a PC game on my home computer (I think it’s called Domain, kind of a wizards, demons and vampires battle game, - which I was confusing with Army of Darkness), in which the wizard character says, “KLAATU BARADA NIKTO” as he is casting his spell. This phrase is just popping up all over the place!
It’s a site for “skins” for a computer game, basically so you can play as other characters. Now that I think about it, it could have been made up by the guy that made it, but I’d think not. Does anyone know where an Internet list of the credits for RotJ would be? They tend to include the names of characters that were never specifically mentioned in the movies.
So is the “Day the Earth Stood Still” the original source, or “Army of Darkness”? Or does it go even further back to a conspiracy at the foundation of the Illuminati? Maybe there are somet things man is not supposed to know…
Here there is discussion of a claim that the Beatles made music under the band name KLAATU. It is towards the bottom and also mentions the Return of the Jedi characters.
The truth of course is that KLATTU and the Beatles were not the same band. FWIW Klatuu the band got their name from Day the Earth Stood Still.
I had one of the Star Wars action figures that was named Klaatu. Don’t know about Barada and Nikto.
MattTheCroc, the mud = dumb thing comes IFAIK from the Abraham Lincoln assassination. John Wilkes Booth was injured and went to a doctor for care. That doctor’s name was Mudd. That led to the phrase “His name is Mudd.” Then somebody noticed the neat coincidental similarity and the cute pun.
Really shouldn’t that be “Mudd spelled backwards is ddum?”
No, no, no. If you say “mud spelled backwards is dumb,” that indicates that you think dumb is spelled “dum.” It’s usually stupid characters in the cartoons that say this.
: