Return Of The King Movie Facts, Easter Eggs and hidden details

Gandalf brought 3 eagles with him because he believed Smeagol wasn't beyond redemption

And The Hobbit (2012), the prequel to the LOTR trilogy, the stone trolls can be seen frozen in the same position.

. Seen the movie literally hundreds of times. Never realized until tonight that Eowyn grabs a scimitar from an orcs hand before using it to take down an oliphant.

Peter Jackson had a cameo in "The Return of the King" (2004) as one of the pirates. He was cut out of the theatrical cut, but appears in the extended cut.

Gandalf sends 3, not 2 eagles into Mordor after the destruction of the ring - because he expected to pick up Gollum, too.

Gandolf brought a third eagle for Golum.

A ranger of Gondor, Golasgil, hands out weapons to other soldiers. Golasgil is played by Royd Tolkien, great-son of J.R.R.

In Bilbo and Frodo's book, "There and Back Again," there are marks over each of the vowels, a nod to Tolkien's elvish writing system of Tengwar, which uses marks over other letters to denote the presence of vowels.

When Pippin looks in to the palantir and wakes everyone up, Gimli stays passed out from drinking too much that night. (see bottom left hand corner)

When Legolas climbs and kills an Oliphaunt, the Oliphaunt repeatedly attempts to swat him off with it's tail.

Pippin tells Denethor that "the mightiest man may be slain by one arrow, Boromir was pierced by many" (3 in fact). Later, Faramir survives the ambush after being shot twice, implying he is indeed his brother's equal.

", during the epic scene of the Rohirrim Charge Peter Jackson requested that only extras who have read the novel and could recite the scene, to be placed in the front lines as they are aware of the importance of this moment. It's how he ended up with this epic rider.

The giant eagle that saves Frodo & Samwise, as originally described in J.R.R. Tolkien's book (1955), was inspired by the pub in Oxford where Tolkien famously wrote much of the novels. The pub's plackard depicts a large eagle carrying a boy.

Samwise Gamgee finally returns home and is hugged by his daughter, Elanor. That's Sean Astin's daughter in real life, Alexandra.

During the celebration at Edoras, you can spot a young boy doing some underage drinking, much to the shock of the woman beside him.

You can see scarring around Frodo's neck where the chain carrying the One Ring would have hung showing that the Ring physically affects Frodo as a heavy burden

Merry and Pippin continued wearing the uniforms of Gondor and Rohan upon returning to the Shire.

The Palant?r seeing-stone Aragorn holds does not activate until he actually looks directly at it.

We see Denethor holding Boromir's broken horn. We actually see the horn being broken after Boromir is shot by the third arrow in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

When the gate of Minas Tirith is first breached, Easterlings can be seen in behind the orcs and trolls, which are also seen in The Two Towers when Frodo and Sam reach the Black Gate.

Two scars on Frodo's chest are clearly visible: on his right the hit received on the chain mail of mithril under the mines of Moria, on his left the wound received by the Witch-King on Weathertop.

Gandalf brought three eagles to the erupting Mount Doom instead of two -- presumably to save Smeagol had he survived.

When Aragorn is crowned King of Gondor, his armour is very similar to Elendil's armour at the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Elendil was the first High King of Gondor.

As we see Frodo finishing his manuscript, the director pulls back to reveal the missing finger of Frodo's hand, a reminder of his moment of weakness inside Mount Doom.

Merry's helmet in the Ride of the Rohirrim appears to be repaired. It shows a nice link to how people at that tech level would treat armor. Repair, not remake.

When Gollum finally takes the ring back, there is a brief expression of sadness on his face. This is Sm?agol being sad at what he did to his master, before the ring takes him over and he becomes Gollum again.

After Sam kills the orcs in the stronghold, Sting stops glowing, meaning there are no more orcs nearby.

When Denethor orders his guards to burn Faramir and himself alive, one of the guards looks quickly to the others like "We really doing this? We are? Okay."

When the Rohirrim charges the mumakil, the moment the first mumak hits a rider, all background music stops for 90 seconds... everything focuses on just the fighting