20 Things You Didn't Know About The Prestige

11. The Identity Of The Tesla Machine Heckler

The Prestige Edison Man 2
Warner Bros.

Midway through the film there's a scene in which Tesla's assistant Alley (Andy Serkis) shows off his boss's alternating current machine to a crowd inside London's Royal Albert Hall.

Unfortunately, the demonstration doesn't go very well, and Alley is forced to leave the stage when the machine starts to crackle and whirr violently. But before the scene ends, the camera focuses on one particular heckler in the audience (pictured above) who shouts things like "does that look safe to you?" and "this thing is gonna blow!"

At first you might think that he's a random citizen who's fearful of Tesla's machine, but later in the film, this same man appears again - just before the scene where Angier finds Tesla's burning home - referenced as one of Thomas Edison's men.

The Prestige Edison Man
Warner Bros.

So, he wasn't just a random heckler after all - he was working for Edison the whole time, and his yells of concern were actually just a way for him to try and discredit Tesla, Edison's biggest rival.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!