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The breakout characters ofStranger Things 3besides Maya Hawkes Robin and Hoppersfloral shirt are a bunch of exploding rats.
Working onStranger Thingsis like were all a bunch of 16-year-olds playing, visual effects supervisor Paul Graff told Vulture.
We wanted to do something that was heavy and wet, but not traumatizing.
Its a very fine line you have to find there between icky but not terrifying.
And, more importantly, they couldnt explode live rats.
We had that high-angle drone shot looking down at the factory and the black rats running through the factory.
It was very cool.
We were so excited about it.
But that performance didnt make the final cut.
We ordered anything we could find that was a rat, including remote-controlled rats that were hideously dysfunctional.
Later, they would be replaced.
The CG rat won out.
It was just more expressive.
The Duffers wanted the monster to resemble thesecond seasons Mind Flayerreconstructing itself out of body parts.
It could have teeth and even the same pterodactyl jot down of head, Graff said.
That would tell us that maybe its the same entity, just a different iteration.
The first version had a spider shape and tentacles, which they later made retractable, but no teeth.
There were many iterations of the face of the monster until we got it just right.
Behind the scenes, the goop was imagined as Play-Doh made up of bones and tissues.
It didnt look very impressive.
Its definitely awesome and awful at the same time.
