10 Even More Movie Scenes Shot For Real
8. Those Squirrels Really Cracked Nuts - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
You know when Johnny Depp's version of the iconic Willy Wonka tells the various guests wandering around his Chocolate Factory that his collection of squirrels were "specially trained to get the nuts out of shells"? Well, that's actually closer to the truth than you likely assumed.
Because director Tim Burton preferred the idea of using real squirrels in his 2005 adaptation of Roald Dahl's famous novel, an eventual 40 rodents were brought in and trained for the scene involving Veruca Salt being classed as a bad nut and attacked by the little creatures.
A grand total of 19 weeks (via LA Times) were spent turning these various squirrels into animals that could comfortably leave their crates and perform the trick of picking up a nut and dumping it into a metal bowl on camera.
CGI was still used for those shots that involved the critters interacting closely with Julia Winter's Veruca, and animatronics were also in play in the background for certain moments, too.
But a ton of the nut cracking/handling, and even parts of the rodent attack on Veruca (well, Winter's stunt double) were performed by a bunch of very real and well trained squirrels.