10 More Movies You Didn't Know Recycled Footage From Other Films
5. Fight Club Used Breath Effects From Titanic
Now, this is where recycled footage gets pretty damn creative, and trust David Fincher of all filmmakers to be the one to go there.
You probably remember a scene early in Fight Club where the narrator (Edward Norton) imagines himself entering an icy cave and discovering his power animal - in this case a CGI penguin that tells him, "slide."
The narrator's icy breath is visible throughout the brief sequence, and while you might freely assume the VFX-heavy film simply concocted the breath from scratch in post, this actually isn't true.
The recently defunct animation studio Blue Sky Studios, who created the Ice Age films, worked on both Fight Club and James Cameron's Titanic.
They created a number of bespoke breath effects for Tiitanic's later scenes in which Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) are out on the water.
These effects were actually re-used in this Fight Club scene, with the very same animations being imported, manipulated, and tracked onto Edward Norton as he moved throughout the cave.
While some online reports claim that Leonardo DiCaprio's own breath was replicated in Fight Club, this hasn't ever been officially confirmed by the VFX artists. The "breath elements" were indeed recycled, though.