It has been seven years since we last saw Clark Kent in Superman Returns back in 2006. Reviving the franchise, for hopefully the last time, Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. delivered audiences Man of Steel this summer, which earned over $662 million at the box office worldwide. It was a big production to bring the Big Blue Boy Scout back on to the silver screen, and there are some pretty cool tidbits behind the scenes that many DC fanboys may find interesting. Check them out after the break. 

1. Genesis Chambers, the pods Kryptonians are born in and introduced to the Superman lore by John Byrne in the ’80s, is a word made up by David S. Goyer
2. The graphic artists and production team hired a linguist to help create a fully functioning phonetic language and Kryptonian alphabet that can be seen as script on the walls of the Council Chamber on Krypton and on their clothing
3. Michael Shannon‘s armor worn by General Zod, Russell Crowe’s armor worn by Jor-El, and the rest of the Zod army armor is all computer generated; the actors all wore motion capture suits
4. However, Faora’s (Antje Traue) armor was created practically because it didn’t have as many difficult shapes
5. All of the architecture on Krypton was developed in the belief that Kryptonians lived organically; obviously they weren’t a sustainable culture…
6. Zack Snyder and friends actually filmed on a real crab-fishing boat, the Debbie Sue, to make it feel more authentic; many of the crew threw up due to the swell of the tide
7. The oil rig is actually a full set, built on a parking lot, and shot on a green screen background; the helicopter that comes to save everyone is actually real
8. John Carpenter’s They Live had a big influence on the way the visual effects team when young Clark (Cooper Timberline) first experiences his new X-Ray vision ability
9. Plano, Illinois was used as the backdrop for Smallville, Kansas
10. When the teenage Clark’s (Dylan Sprayberry) school bus drives off the bridge, it is an actual bus driving off a bridge at 45 mph into a four-foot deep river, 20 feet below; the sinking bus was filmed in a green screen room in a water tank
11. If you look closely on the wall in the room where Clark’s (Henry Cavill) spaceship is kept you can see all of Pa Kent’s (Kevin Costner) news clippings of alien sightings in hopes of finding an answer to his son’s origins
12. Allison Crowe, the singer at the bar older Clark visits, is a musician director Zack Snyder met off of the Internet that he has wanted to use for Watchmen and Sucker Punch, but scheduling had never worked out until now
13. Henry Cavill and Russell Crowe have met before, 12 years prior, on the set of Proof of Life. Henry was playing rugby at his boarding school as an extra, and struck up a conversation with Crowe after the shoot. Mailing words of encouragement of how to be an actor to the young Cavill, Crowe sent a photograph of himself from Gladiator, and on the back it said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
14. Jet engines were used to help produce wind for the tornado scene
15. Surprisingly, the helicopters flying in the background in the scene where Zod first lands on Earth to pick up Kal-El are actually real
16. Zod’s ship is called the Black Zero
17. The first time Henry dons the Superman uniform for the production was when he saves Lois (Amy Adams) and they are floating back down to Earth in Smallville
18. All of the battle sequences in Smallville were shot on location and never on a set except for flying sequences
19. After the Black Zero is sucked into the black hole, Zombies were brought on set as a joke to attack Superman and Lois after they land on ground zero of Metropoolis, recalling back to Snyder’s work on Dawn of the Dead
20. 32 square miles of Metropolis were destroyed in the battle against Zod
21. Principle photography took 125 days to film; the last scene shot was the meeting between General Swanwick (Harry Lennix) and Superman after he takes down a satellite

And for even more tidbits from Man of Steel, here is a neat little infographic courtesy of Warner Bros.:

Find out more tidbits from the other special features when Man of Steel releases on home video 3D Blu-Ray, Blu-ray and DVD on November 11.
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