9 Hidden Facts You Didn't Know About Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

It was pretty clear to most viewers that Senator Palpatine was the dude under the hood seen chatting to the Trade Federation and Darth Maul throughout Episode I - The Phantom Menace. 

But the people in the galaxy far, far away weren't exactly aware that he was secretly Darth Sidious, even though he wasn't really doing that much to hide it.

There's a memorable scene there when Sidious and Maul have a chat on a balcony on Coruscant, with the latter telling him, "at last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have our revenge."

If you compare that balcony to the one seen outside of Palpatine's office in the same movie, you'll actually find that Sidious is wandering across the exact same one when talking to his Sith Apprentice. 

With this conversation going down at night, perhaps their big black cloaks made them invisible to the average flying vehicle soaring past Sheev's place of work. Or maybe Palpatine just enjoyed the thrill of living on the edge. 

Either way, for the few audience members out there who didn't realise the Sheev/Sith connection, Lucas secretly let them know that Palps and Sidious were linked with something as simple as a balcony.