13 details you missed in 'Spy Kids'

Last year, "Spy Kids" director and creator, Robert Rodriguez, said during San Diego Comic-Con panel with Collider's editor in chief Steven Weintraub that he had to fight to make the family Latin.

Rodriguez, of course, won this battle as can be seen by the Cortez family but you can see the Latin American influence on the props, set designs, and script. For example, at the beginning of the film, the medicine Juni (Daryl Sabara) uses to treat his hand warts is called "Mezqui-no." This might be a fun play on the word mezquino which in Latin America Spanish means warts.

There's also a sign that says "Peligro. Alto Voltaje" on the wall behind Juni when he sleeps at Machete's (Danny Trejo) workshop. This translates to "danger. high voltage" and the sign is set up in a way that would probably mean non-Spanish children could work it out.

Finally, at the end Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming) renames the robotic clones of Carmen and Juni as Junito and Carmenita which means little Carmen (Alexa PenaVega) and Juni, implying that the two robots are little reminders of the two children that inspired him.

In addition to basing the Cortez family dynamic on his own family, Rodriguez named some of the characters after his own family members. Gregorio Cortez was based on his uncle, Gregorio Rodriguez, who actually worked for the FBI and inspired "Spy Kids." Juni and Carmen were named after Robert Rodriguez's brother and sister. Plus, The first names of three of Rodriguez's five children make up Juni's middle name, Rocket Racer Rebel.

There are also a couple of names that may not have been an intentional reference. Ms Gradenko (Teri Hatcher) shares a name with a song by the English rock band, The Police. Gregorio Cortez was also the name of a Texan folk hero. Finally, the simple acronym Rodriguez chose for the organization the Cortez family works for, the OSS (the Organization of Super Spies), is the same acronym for an actual espionage organization from WWII, the Office of Strategic Services.

Some of the names in "Spy Kids" were based on puns. The best example was Floop's minion's real name being Alexander Minion (Tony Shalhoub), hence when Minion takes over as the main villain, he changes his name from plain Minion to Mr Minion.

There's also Mr Lisp (Robert Patrick), the person funding Floop and Minion's villainous activities. It is more or less certain that he was named that way for the scene where Ms Gradenko pronounces his named with an actual lisp as "Mr Lith."

Carla Gugino shocked the internet when she told Variety that she was only 28 when she starred as the "Spy Kids" mom, Ingrid Cortez, for the first time. For the 20th anniversary of "Spy Kids" this year, Gugino opened up about playing the iconic mother.

She said: "What's particularly strange about the 'Spy Kids' of it all is I was so young when I did it. I was at least ten years too young for the role because I was supposed to have been a spy for ten years, then had two children who were now 10 and 12.

"But Robert kind of said, 'My mom had ten kids and if we play this right, no one will ever question it.' I think it only hurt me a little because people did think I was older than I was for a period of time."

To compare, Antonio Banderas who plays Ingrid's husband Gregorio was 40 when "Spy Kids" came out in cinemas.

One of the settings for "Spy Kids" is a place that does not exist. The aerial shot of San Diablo, the city where Carmen and Juni attempt to hide from Floop's henchmen was actually a shot of the capital of Chile, Santiago Del Chile. San Diablo is also an oxymoron. If you translate it, it means saint devil.

Coincidentally the city shares a name with a fake country referenced in Marvel comics in the 60s and 80s. A stranger coincidence is that a Marvel comic villain, Machete, is from this fake country.

"Spy Kids" has an interesting take on what counts as a disguise. Felix Gumm (Cheech Marin), the "Spy Kids" fake uncle, and Gregorio, the "Spy Kids" dad, both wear mustaches as a disguise so people don't recognize them even though their facial hair barely changes their facial features. Uncle Felix even wears it in front of Carmen and Juni despite the fact that he wouldn't need to hide his secret identity because he's a family friend.

Glasses are also used as a disguise for Alexander Minion. When he is just a minion to Floop, he wears glasses but once he takes over and becomes the head villain, Minion becomes Mr Minion and takes off his glasses. We are later revealed that he was always a villain and was kicked out of the OSS (the Organization of Super Spies). It is unclear whether Minion's glasses were meant to hide his identity or were a metaphorical disguise, hiding the fact that Minion is the true villain from the audience. But, if it works for Superman, I guess it can work here as well and "Spy Kids" is a kids movie after all.

The trivia section of IMDB said that the "How to be a spy" book that Carmen reads is actually a "Pocket Ref," an all-purpose pocket-sized reference book created by Thomas J Glover and popularized by the debunking show "Mythbusters." According to IMDB, you can see the contents of the book if you look carefully.

However, the fake covers for this book and the book Juni has to read on how to fly the small plane are also interesting because instead of coming up with a fake author name, the designers just labeled it "Author Unknown." This works because the authors were probably spies who were not allowed to reveal their secret identities.

One key moment that everyone remembers from "Spy Kids" is the microwave that created a Mcdonald's meal seemingly out of thin air. It was one of a number of high-tech gadgets we see in the movie because cool gadgets are a key component of sky movies.

Whilst it is obviously fictional, it is interesting that the magic microwave is called the "Rehydrator," implying that it turned the flat cards into that McDonald's meal by just adding water.

The idea for the magic microwave potentially did not come from thin air. A similar microwave appeared in "Back to the Future II" when Marty goes to the technologically advanced future of 2015. Whilst scientists haven't worked out how to make such an invention in the real world, the closest comparison is the fact that Astronauts dehydrate and rehydrate their food in order to reduce weight on rockets.

One of the main characters that fans remember of "Spy Kids" is the freaky robots made up of 5 thumbs, called Thumb Thumbs. However, this is not the only part of the villain's lair that is hand themed. Floop seemed to be obsessed with hands going so far as to make his brand based on him showing an "F" with his own hand.

There's that one nail version of the Thumb Thumbs that we see later in the film acting like a nurse for the robots. The nail version differs as all the thumbs are replaced by slender fingers with sharp pink fingernails. When Floop treats Ingrid and Gregorio (Antonio Banderas) to a colorful dinner, some of the cutlery is shaped like a hand. Even his evil throne was essentially a giant hand with weird faces on it.

As a Genius who creates things by hand, and spends a lot of the movie playing with clay, maybe there is a reason behind the hand imagery. Or maybe it was set up so that viewers were not too freaked out by the triple-handed, quadruple-headed mutant Floop's minion, Alexander Minion, gets turned into towards the end of the movie.

The inspiration for the villain, Floop, came from a beloved children's character. Rodriguez said in a screenwriting interview that he wanted Floop to be "like Willy Wonka, imaginative and childlike." Cumming's Floop definitely does have a Willy Wonka feel to him especially with the way he aligns himself with children instead of adults.

Floop's henchman also originates from Rodriguez's own childlike imagination. The design for the ThumbThumbs was something he entered for a competition when he was 13.

Whilst post-credit scenes may have been popularised by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was used long before the first "Iron Man." In fact, the "Spy Kids" series has a post-credit scene in its first two movies. You probably had missed this because nothing really happens in them.

In the post-credit scene in 2001's "Spy Kids" there is no voices, no music. All we see is a shot of the hallway in Floop's castle leading up to the control room. Is this meant to be a menacing shot? Does it imply that something went wrong with Juni and Carmen's mission? Or is it just extra footage that Robert Rodriguez decided to stick at the end of the movie? Similar to the MCU, the inclusion of this scene leaves us with questions and answers. Or maybe I am looking into this too deeply and should accept that this is a kids movie that is not meant to be completely logical.

Most of "Spy Kids" punchlines are in the moment. However, one joke involving Carmen wearing diapers takes half the movie to come to fruition. Early on in the movie, it is revealed that one of the Cortez children still wears diapers to bed by Ingrid, the spy mom, who says it's not that strange for the child to still be wearing diapers.

At this point, we are led to assume this is Juni Cortez because he was presented as the inferior child because he was not athletic, had no friends, and had warts all over his finger. Yet it is during the scene where they are flying in the plane that we find out the diaper-wearing child is actually Carmen when Juni mocks her for it. This happens pretty late in the movie so it is likely that many would forget this is a callback to the earlier scene.

Throughout the "Spy Kids" series, a number of characters were played by famous actors or actors who will become famous later on. For example, one of Selena Gomez' first role was in the third "Spy Kids" movie as "Waterpark Girl." The third movie also included Sylvester Stallone, Elijah Wood, and Salma Hayek.

Our first big cameo of the series came right at the end of the movie when Juni and Carmen get propositioned by the leader of the OSS, Devlin to take on another mission. Whilst Devlin appears on screen first hiding his identity with a black card over his eyes, he later removes it to reveal none other than Academy-award winning George Clooney. This is less of a missed detail and more of a forgotten one.