5 Famous Movie Costumes (That Have Hilarious Secrets)

While we can only imagine what sci-fi substance the suits are supposed to be made of, the reality is something of a buzzkill. You see, the costume designers for the original Star Trek series were somewhere between opportunistic cheapskates and resourceful masterminds. You know those classic orange EV suits our heroes would sometimes use to explore strange alien planets? Yeah, they were repurposed shower curtains.

This wasn't the only time in Trek history when necessity became the mother of ... stealing household items. Two decades later, the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation were having trouble with the design of a rather iconic prop: Geordi LaForge's visor, the VISOR.

The design team spent three months working on possible designs, all of which got nixed for one reason or another. Fortunately, Trek artist Mike Okuda was watching his girlfriend put a barrette in her hair one day when he thought to himself: "Wow, wouldn't that look good over Geordi's eyes." In other words, people made lots of jokes about the VISOR looking like a 1980s "banana clip" because the VISOR was a 1980s banana clip.

The team added light-emitting diodes to represent the VISOR's "connection points" and tiny monofilament loops fit over LeVar Burton's ears to hold it in place. What did the production team think of the final product? According to Production Designer Herman Zimmerman, "I can't tell you how much money we spent in research and development on that to [finally] come up with a $0.69 barrette."

With rubber too scarce to use for a costume, filmmakers looked for alternative materials with which to create the king of monsters. And so, with an appalling lack of consideration for the poor actor they were going to stuff inside it, they proceeded to craft their Godzilla suit out of something that was much easier to find: ready-to-mix concrete.

As you might have guessed, that shit was heavy. According to actor Haruo Nakajima, the suit weighed about 220 pounds -- he credited the training he received in the Navy for allowing him to walk around in that thing. Nakajima said that during breaks, he would wring the sweat out of his shirt into a jar, and he recalls that he "really stunk up the inside of that suit to an unbelievable degree." In other words, Godzilla stank. Roland Emmerich got it right after all.

Atwood said that she spied the shells while browsing a flea market in Thailand, looking for "unique materials" to use for costumes. Apparently beetle ranching is a thing in Thailand, where the poop-loving insects are farmed and used for food. Atwood was "thrilled" to discover that she could order large quantities of the discarded shells, because who wants to deal with offing a bunch of dung beetles to make a dress?

The ones who got the shit end of the stick in this scenario (other than the beetles) were the seamstresses working for Atwood. Some 50 of them were tasked with drilling holes in beetles and attaching them to the dress. Unfortunately, the shells were "treacherously" sharp to handle, so the workers were forced to wear gloves while giving substance to her beetle dreams. But hey, the dress ended up appearing onscreen for over a second, so it was all worth it in the end.

You see, the "dress" began its life as an antique bedspread that turned up in an Italian thrift store. Costume designer Trisha Biggar was browsing the shop when she saw the piece of Edwardian bedding and thought, "Wow, someone should totally get married up in this thing." The bedspread wasn't very large, so they ended up spreading out pieces of the lace and stitching it to a background of tulle. So if your great-grandparents lived in Italy and had a lace bedspread, there's a chance their linens had a cameo in Star Wars.

Now, it's not exactly a costume, but there's one additional Star Wars prop that bears mentioning. Remember the animal Chewbacca finds baiting an Ewok trap in Return Of The Jedi? You probably didn't study it too closely, and Han dismisses it as "Just a dead animal, Chewie." Yeah, we're reasonably sure that's a dead white-tailed deer with teeth in its butthole.

Now, the filmmakers haven't confirmed this, either because they're scared of PETA or they don't want to admit they put teeth in a deer's bunghole. But more than a few people -- the type who have the time to watch Jedi multiple times and very slowly -- have scrutinized the scene and realized that the "unidentified tusked species" has to be a deer ass. Why would a multi-million-dollar production feel the need to resort to that? Did George Lucas personally select the butthole or delegate the task? What does Chewie's eagerness to get the ass imply about his sex life? We'll let you decide.

On the off chance that you're thinking about doing some costuming of your own, it's probably worth it to invest in a sewing machine. And as long as you say it's for your fandom, nobody will think it's weird!

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For more check out 6 Famous Movies Costumes That Put Actors Through Total Hell and 7 Insane But True Stories About Famous Movie Costumes.

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