So, the Matrix Code is Sushi Recipes

In the late 90s and early 00s we got a lot of movies having to do with newfangled computer hacking and a general misunderstanding of actual computing capabilities, but man were they fun to watch!

I remember seeing the Matrix the day it came out in 1999 and I freaking loved it. It truly made one think whether you could stomach either the red or blue pill. And as it turns out, should you take the red pill and dive down the rabbit hole, you are going to get downloaded into a world of – sushi recipes.

After much deliberation of what the matrix code would LOOK like, it came down to the the Wachowski’s love for Japanese Culture and the visual effects managers‘ Japanese wife.

“The Wachowskis didn’t feel like the design was old-fashioned and traditional enough. They wanted something that was more Japanese, more manga,” Simon Whiteley says. “They asked me if I’d like to have a go working at the code, mainly because my wife is Japanese and she could help me work out the characters and give me insight into which characters were good and which weren’t.”

So Whiteley went home and began browsing through the “stacks of Japanese cookbooks” owned by his wife, looking for inspiration. 

Though the specific trickle code that made it in the final films is not easily readable, it’s fun to know now that perhaps that glitch isn’t Mr. Smith, but a call for more onions.

“My wife and I have this funny argument at home,” says Whiteley. “She doesn’t think you can get a sushi recipe from the code because it’s written in katakana. Instead she thinks it’s recipes for teriyaki or ramen noodles.”