20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn’t Know About Groundhog Day

4. It Was Never Going To Be All That Dark

There are a lot of pretty dark readings of the film: the idea that it is inevitable that given all of that time and no accountability, Phil would definitely have turned to crime out of perverse fascination.

And he probably had sex with everyone and everything, just for variation. But when asked on Reddit why he didn't simply force himself on Rita, Rubin said there was no way either he or Ramis would have been that dark:

"There is an answer to this! When I was first brainstorming the movie it occurred to me that it could go very dark. If Phil is really testing what is possible in a land without consequences, he would probably go through a phase of walking on the dark side. Rape, murder, arson, etc. But here's where the writer comes in: I had recently become a father, was starting out on a new life as a screenwriter, and feeling very upbeat (as usual, actually). I thought about it and decided against making this, as I thought of it at the time, as a David Lynch film. There may be a good, deep, reasonable human reason that Phil didn't rape anybody, but the real reason is because the writer didn't want him to."