Stanley Kubrick's horror classic, The Shining, has such a cult following that even over 30 years after the film was released, the film's details are still being discussed.
But even amateur scholars of the movie might not have noticed this small detail that adds another twist of the screw to this already mind-bending movie.
From the beginning of the movie, though, the isolated setting isn't the only unsettling detail. In the opening scene of the movie, Kubrick used the real-life Timberline Lodge in Oregon where keen-eyed views have counted 42 cars in the parking lot.
If that isn't enough, Kubrick altered the room number where the main characters stay from 217 to 237. Multiply those numbers together as (2x3x7), and you'll get, you guessed it: 42.
But why the number shows up so often in the movie is as much as a mystery as what the number means. Some theorize Kubrick had been borrowing from Freud's idea that recurring numbers can be quite disturbing.
But if you look at numerology, 42 is actually positive. The number is related to themes of family and community, we're supposed to believe Jack was motivated to find at the beginning of the film.