There are fun and fascinating Guinness World Records in every sphere you can think of, and the silver screen is no exception. Here are 10 entertaining records related to movies, from the most commonly used movie title to the most reused prop.
- Most commonly used movie title
- Most appearances by a movie in other movies
- First Hollywood movie to feature a toilet
- Heaviest costume in a film
- Most credited individuals for a movie
- First movie with an official soundtrack
- Most deaths in a movie career
- Longest gap between trailer and movie release
- Largest film stunt explosion
- Most reused prop
Most commonly used movie title
According to IMDb, there have been 34 feature films titled Broken (as of January 2024), making it the most common movie title of all time. Hero is the runner-up with 33 and Mother rounds out the top three with 30. (Though if you factor in films based on the same source material, Hamlet would tie for first place.)
Most appearances by a movie in other movies
Clips from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) have shown up in more movies than any other movie—129 times, to be exact. It’s not just so popular to sample because it’s a classic: The distributor didn’t properly copyright the film, so it’s in the public domain.
First Hollywood movie to feature a toilet
The bathroom fixture best remembered in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) may be the shower, but the toilet made history as the first ever shown in a Hollywood film. Psycho also holds the world record for the most referenced movie—580 other movies pay homage to it in some way or another.
Heaviest costume in a film
The white satin wedding dress that Norma Shearer donned as the titular character in 1938’s Marie Antoinette tipped the scales at a staggering 110 pounds—making it the heaviest costume ever worn in a film. Though the dress itself featured 500 yards of fabric (enough to cover a basketball court), it technically wasn’t just the dress that clinched the record: The steel-frame crinoline and 10 petticoats are included in the total weight.
Most credited individuals for a movie
It takes a good 10 minutes to get to the end-credits scene in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and for good reason: There are 5109 credited members of the cast and crew, more than any other movie. The film’s success wouldn’t have been possible without the visual effects team, and neither would the record—they accounted for 2659 of the total.
First movie with an official soundtrack
It didn’t take long for Disney to capitalize on the soundtrack potential of its early musicals. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the studio’s first fully animated feature film, was also the first-ever movie to get an official soundtrack. Lest such a novelty confuse potential consumers, the album, Songs From Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, specified on the cover that it featured “the same characters and sound effects as in the film of that title.”
Most deaths in a movie career
Sean Bean sure seems to die a lot on screen—but his character death count, 25, is paltry compared to the record of Christopher Lee, who perished in “at least 61” movies, per Guinness World Records. Stabbing was his most common cause of death, but his characters have also been “hanged, defenestrated, struck by lightning, staked … shot, burned, electrocuted, dissolved, crushed, blown up, beheaded, bitten by a snake and crashed into the Moon.” Runners-up include Vincent Price and Dennis Hopper (tied at 48), John Hurt, Boris Karloff, Danny Trejo, and Mark Hamill, among others.
Longest gap between trailer and movie release
When How the Grinch Stole Christmas hit theaters on December 9, 2000, viewers were treated to a teaser trailer for the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Nine years and two days later, the movie finally premiered. According to Guinness, director Spike Jonze had envisioned a live-action film that relied on practical effects, and Universal Studios ultimately decided to abandon the project rather than footing the bill for that. Warner Bros. rescued it in time for a whole new generation of kids to care about it.
Largest film stunt explosion
While shooting a scene for the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre, filmmakers detonated nearly 2224 gallons of kerosene and nearly 73 pounds of powder explosives. The roughly 7.5-second explosion, which took place in the Moroccan Sahara, is the largest stunt explosion ever filmed.
Most reused prop
Since the 1960s, Los Angeles props house The Earl Hays Press has sold a fake newspaper known as The Recurring Newspaper, which has featured in everything from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) to Modern Family. According to Guinness, its total number of credits across film and TV is more than 10,000—and that’s a conservative estimate. The paper has an empty front page for productions to customize, and the inside is mostly placeholder text and vague headlines like “Upper House Committee Opens Debate.” (You can buy your own copy for $35.)
Discover More Guinness World Records: