Shawshank Redemption Movie Facts, Easter Eggs and hidden details

The convict seated directly behind Tommy as they arrive at the prison, is the former Ohio State Reformatory warden, Dennis Baker.

Andy asks Red why people call him that and Red answers "Maybe it's because I'm Irish" and smiles as Andy walks away. This is a slight nod to the Novella where Red is Caucasian instead of black and actually is of Irish descent.

Andy and Red's opening chat in the prison yard, in which Red is throwing a baseball, took nine hours to shoot. Morgan Freeman threw the baseball for the entire nine hours without a word of complaint. He showed up for work the next day with his arm in a sling.

Andy's cell number 245 is a nod to bible verse Daniel 2:45

Andy (Tim Robbins) asks Red (Morgan Freeman) why he's called Red. Red retorts "Maybe it's because I'm Irish". This was an in-joke as in the novel by Stephen King, Red was a ginger haired Irishman.

For Red's mugshot when he was younger, production took a picture of Morgan Freeman's son.

Andy doesn't help Capt. Hadley with a tax issue, he cons him. Andy would know that the estate paid any taxes owed before the money is doled out, and he would know that there was no such thing as a "one time only gift to your spouse." (Details in comments)

The narrator says Andy crawled 500 yards to freedom, estimating it to be "just shy of half a mile". A half a mile in yards is 880 yards, almost double that estimation.

. Andy's hiding place for his hammer starts at Exodus.

Red tells andy to "grow eyes in the back of his head". In the first attack his attention is diverted so one of the sisters can get his back.

When the warden opens the Bible the last untouched page is the beginning of the book of Exodus, chronicling the Jewish escape from slavery. This is symbolic of Andy's escape from the chains of imprisonment.

When Brooks is released, the camera is pointing back at the prison, indicating his connection to it and reluctance to leave. When Red leaves, the camera points out of the prison towards freedom, because Red hasn't yet been institutionalised.

When Brooks is riding the bus away from prison, the eyelines of every other passenger is pointing away from him, showing how truely alone he is on the outside.

The detective arresting Hadley reads from his notebook to state the Miranda warning. The Supreme Court ruling which enshrined the Miranda rights (i.e. the suspect's right to remain silent) was made in 1966, the year Andy Dufresne escapes from prison; a new protocol

"Red" is checking over his shoulder despite no longer being in prison. Habits can be hard to break

The same number as the haunted hotel room in The Shining, another Stephen King adaptation.

Red mentions how he'd given up on playing the harmonica after being incarcerated. Later, when Red sees the rock wall with the oak tree, an instrument is introduced into the film's score for the first time: a harmonica.

The Italian opera song that Morgan Freeman's character guesses is about 'indescribable beauty' is really about a countess trying to expose her husbands infidelity

one of the first shots of the prison in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) you can see that the roof of at least one of the buildings in the prison is damaged. Later in the film, the main characters are tasked with repairing the rooves of the buildings.

Andy hid his stone hammer in the second Book of the Bible: Exodus - the story about the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Brooks gets chewed out for not double bagging. Years later at the same grocery store Red uses a double bag.

When Andy Dufresne is telling Red what he wants to do when he gets out of prison, Red says "These are just shitty pipe dreams." The sentence foreshadows Andy's later escape through a literal shit pipe.

Clancy Brown, well known for his protrayal of Captain Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) played a character of the same name, Captain Hadley, in The Guardian (2006).

Dufrense uses the beginning of the Exodus to mark the first page to conceil the rockhammer.

The prisoner who cries first after arriving with Andy's group and is nicknamed Fat Ass is called Fat Ass in the credits

Andy Dufresne plays an opera song called "Sull'aria...che soave zeffiretto" to all the prisoners in the yard. The song is about a duplicitous love letter to expose infidelity, and Dufresne's wife's affair is the event which indirectly leads to his imprisonment.

When Andy plays opera over the PA, Red comments that he "'would like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words." In fact, the song is about writing a love letter.

Andy plays a recording of Mozart's duet, "Sull'aria . . . che soave zeffiretto" from The Marriage of Figaro. The version played features Edith Mathis and Gundula Janowitz and was released in 1968, at least ten years after the scene occurs in the movie's timeframe.

During the scene where Red walks to the oak tree, the score begins to swell along with bird noises and a notable instrument - the harmonica.

Andy gets still and nervous when The Count of Monte Cristo is brought up...

Red says to Andy, "I don't think you ought to be doing this to yourself, Andy. This is just shitty pipedreams. I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is." Some foreshadowing I never caught until now.

Red tells Andy that a new life outside of Shawshank is a "shitty pipe dream".

Everyone on the bus is looking away from Brooks, because that's what you do when you are bored on a bus

The man who confesses to actually killing Andy's wife, while in a different jail (top), is later sitting at the table at Shawshank listening to stories about Andy after Andy escapes prison (bottom).