10 Classic Movie Details You Never Noticed
2. Summer Comparing Tom To "Young Werther" - (500) Days of Summer
Early on in (500) Days of Summer, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) head to a karaoke bar where they discuss their differing perspectives on love, and when their co-worker McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend) asks who is going to sing next, Summer says, "I nominate Young Werther here!"
Given that Summer says the one-liner in a thick German accent, it's easy to assume she's simply goofing around, and yet, Summer is actually making a reference to Goethe's legendary 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
In the novel, Werther is a sensitive young man who becomes hopelessly obsessed with a girl, Charlotte, who does not return his affection.
This is obviously a fitting comparison, given that Tom desires an all-consuming relationship with Summer, who is herself only interested in a casual relationship.
It's actually a pretty cruel nickname for Tom, though, given that Werther ends up killing himself out of despair at the end of the novel, enough that the studio tried to convince filmmaker Marc Webb to cut the line from the movie, but he held firm.