20 Things You Didn't Know About Fight Club

20. The Protagonist’s Name Is… Confusing

Edward Norton’s protagonist is never named: in the credits, he’s just ‘Narrator’, which is how most people refer to him (including Fincher). In the self-help groups, he takes on a variety of fake names - Cornelius, Rupert etc.

Casual fans of the movie infamously took to calling him ‘Jack’, after the Narrator’s satirical use of non-fiction article titles: I Am Jack’s Colon, I am Jack’s Raging Bile Duct, etc etc. For ‘real’ fans, this was clearly a shallow misunderstanding.

The thing is, they’re almost right: in the shooting script, the character is referred to as ‘Jack’ - but probably just for the sake of convenience (just as this article will, going forward).

Those article titles were adapted from real-life Reader’s Digest pamphlets, which is how they were presented in Chuck Palahniuk’s original novel: I Am Joe’s Colon, I am Joe’s Raging Bile Duct, etc etc. However, Reader’s Digest refused permission at a late stage for Fincher’s film to use their copyrighted titles. They didn’t want their buttoned-down brand associated with a film like Fight Club.

This led to Norton having to step back in to re-record sections of his narration, replacing ‘Joe’ with ‘Jack’, the name in the script.

However, to Project Mayhem and Marla Singer, his name is Tyler Durden. ‘Tyler’ buys plane tickets in his name: does he have fake ID? Or was that the narrator’s name all along? Did ‘Tyler’ just take it from him, leaving him nameless as he did with the members of Project Mayhem?