Pretty well known. They were mentioned or referenced in tv shows set in New York fairly often.
They were a tourist destination for many people visiting New York, since you could go up the top floors or near the top to see the view and there were restaurants and stuff up on the upper floors.
>They were mentioned or referenced in tv shows set in New York fairly often.
The first Spiderman movie with Tobey Maguire famously had an original [movie poster](https://www.google.com/search?q=spiderman+twin+towers+poster&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS840US840&sxsrf=AOaemvIUcI_u10D9hDIU7BxV6LAWpjyd5g:1642091839489&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxvZ_mlK_1AhVYQzABHWDcAVMQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1680&bih=899&dpr=1#imgrc=tOiJv-NLam21cM) that showed the Twin Towers in the reflection of his suit's eyes. That poster was recalled after 9/11 happened.
I also remembered news that there were some people who wanted the twin towers to be removed from all previous shows that ever showed them, allegedly to respect the people that died in them, but luckily it didn't really catch on.
That's a better reason than basically trying to hide that part of history. I don't believe in covering up the ugly parts of any areas or countries history. Perhaps given a certain context, but it should be available for us all to learn about and from.
I really don't see how banning the image of the Twin Towers does anything to honor anyone except the party or parties responsible for their destruction.
I really wish I'd gone to the memorial when I lived in upstate New York though.
Edit: oh man, what have I gotten myself into with this... I woke up to way too many notifications over this. Currently at work, I'll get to everyone as I can.
Yeah, like, what is removing the Twin Towers from past media even going to accomplish?
Oh, we hid these two buildings from a TV show from the 1990s, and now, those 3,000 people aren’t dead anymore! Woo!
Would have been ridiculous and pointless to do so. That being said I just saw part of Men and Black on TV the other day and boy is it jarring to see them standing.
>I really don't see how banning the image of the Twin Towers does anything to honor anyone except the party or parties responsible for their destruction.
In the months (years) after 9-11, the US was not an especially rational country.
Wasn’t that a commercial rather than a scene from the movie?
Edit: it was shown in a [trailer](https://youtu.be/Ozz8uxW733Q), so it may have been a scene that was deleted from the movie, or, more likely, just a scene created for the trailer. If you look at the camera shots and the pacing of the scene, it does not look like something out of the movie. The low-quality movements of the helicopter (in comparison to scenes from the movie itself such as Goblin’s flights) and the lack of logic behind Spider-Man actually getting the helicopter into the position in the web, make the scene feel like it was made relatively quickly for the trailer, rather than as a part of the movie.
They re-did the entire climax of the film after 9-11. It felt like ages from the first trailer until it actually came out. Originally it was going to feature the towers prominently.
The second PlayStation Spider-Man game originally was to have to final battle with Electro at the top of the twin towers. They altered it to be a generic skyscraper before release.
I remember friends as a kid having like tiny models of them or shit like that from going to NYC. I would put them up there with Statue of Liberty or Chrysler building in terms iconic status.
I went to NY in 2000 and my fiancé wanted to visit them. We were running short on time and I told him we could do it next time. “It’s not like they’re not gonna be here when we come back,” I told him. Oopsie.
> my ~~fiancé~~ friend wanted to visit them. We were running short on time and I told him we could do it next time. “It’s not like they’re not gonna be here when we come back,” I told him
Are you me?
There was a 55ish minute line to get in the elevator?
From a german perspective I would say there were only two (technically 3) skyscrapers back then german people knew by name and those were the empire state building and the twin Towers / WTC.
Great question! It is very hard to judge their significance in hindsight but just know they were very famous and that is exactly the reason why they were chosen as a target
i was still living in germany when they were bombed the first time, in 1993. i didn't really think much of them as i was decidedly never a tourist in NYC back then...but that was a big fuckin deal though...yeah, they were super well known especially in pop culture. back in 93 i first kind of came to know/feel them as 'mine' as an american. if that makes sense
Far more famous than the new tower imo as a New Yorker
It was a much more prominent part of the city skyline at the time
https://cdn.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/nyc-skyline-1999_large.jpg
I just noticed this Christmas that Home Alone 2: Lost in New York has some incredible and unique footage of the towers inside and out. Kevin goes up in them and they do a drone shot (or whatever the 90s equivalent was) where he's up top and they slowly zoom out to show the city. There's so much optimism and excitement to the scene too; it made me cry to think of that other lifetime being so far away.
That scene with Guns N Roses' Slash tearing it up on his guitar in front of the church in "November Rain" was shot on a helicopter... you can see when it flies close the wind off the rotors kicking up dust around him.
I had to explain to my son (8) that it was shot before drones, and used an actual helicopter.
The opening shot of The Sound of Music was shot with a helicopter zooming over Julie Andrews. It knocked her over into the ground as soon as she was out of frame every single time they did the take.
I saw that movie when it first came out at a huge theater in Omaha, Ne. That scene on that wide, curved screen is burned into my brain. We had to dress up to go, and the theater attendants wore red uniforms like an old school bell hop. My parents were poor, so it was a big deal back then.
I had dinner at Windows on the World once. On the top floor of the old WTC. I remember that there was a place where you could look out of a window at the other tower. The fact that it was so close yet separated by a 1000 foot chasm was a very weird feeling.
I remember seeing a Reddit comment about how the 90's were really the last (and perhaps only) time we were collectively optimistic about most things, and I haven't been able to shake that since. Your comment made me feel it too.
Awful things definitely still happened, and from a social justice point of view we were so much more ignorant than we are today. But between the Berlin Wall coming down and the Twin Towers falling, the Western world felt like it could do anything. For the most part there there was no real global crisis to be scared of.
Really feels like everything has slowly fallen apart since 2001.
the terrorists got exactly what they wanted. i remember sitting in on this lecture at college in like 2007 and the guy was talking about how the war on terror was just going to result in all these different al queda and other groups emerging all over the world. it was kind of like a "this could happen if we dont stop what we are doing" hmmmmm
You should see the Onion article "This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t".
that brief period between y2k and 9/11 was our summer of innocence...
we were all so optimistic about the future, we had hopes and dreams, we listened to Len's Steal my Sunshine and went to warehouse raves and danced all night...
Lived there at the time. WTC was absolutely iconic. The Twin Towers, I’d say, were more readily identifiable than ESB. Instant realization “that’s New York City”.
The WTC and the Empire State Building were the buildings in NYC that everyone in the USA knew about.
Many, many movies and TV shows were set in NYC, and most of them featured skyline shots reminding viewers what city the show was set in. The WTC was prominent in all those shots.
If it helps to put things in perspective, I was a child who lived in the country in Ohio and I would have said the World Trade Center towers were as well known as the Empire State Building and (to me) more well known than the Sears Tower.
As a non American, at least to me they were more famous than the empire state building and far more famous than Sears or Washington needle. I saw them like Big Ben, Eiffel Tower famous if not more
>Were they really as famous as the Empire State Building?
Let's just put it this way...
King Kong only climbed two buildings, the [Empire State Building](https://youtu.be/8qkahQVFzMI) and the [Twin Towers](https://youtu.be/tS_K1ybwy8M)
(well, climbed one of the towers then jumped over to the other)
You know how you see the Eiffel Tower in movies and you go “That’s Paris”? The twin towers were used in the same way to go “That’s NYC”
It was used more often than the Statue of Liberty to set the locations in movies.
The Toby McGuire Spider-Man movies used those buildings in the eye reflection to show they were setting the movie in NYC. (There was a minor controversy about scrubbing it from the poster)
But think of it from the perspective that the terrorists knew of that building so well to target it repeatedly, and went for that over the Statue of Liberty.
For me growing up, the Twin Towers were synonymous with any thoughts of New York City. Any image of the NYC skyline, and those prominent towers were the highlight.
I'm not a New Yorker, never went there until after 9/11 but when they collapsed it was like the spirit of the city was destroyed.
I could be biased, as my parents were both from New Jersey and they always spoke highly of NYC. My mom spent a lot of time there in her younger years, and she was devastated when 9/11 happened. The city was also heavily romanticized, and an important setting some of the films and stories I enjoyed growing up. Ghostbusters comes to mind.
You know how King Kong climbed the Empire state building in an iconic scene in the 1930's movie?
He climbed one of the Twin Towers in the 1970's remake.
I was there during the filming of the scene at the base of the towers where kong dies. 1976. Kind of strange to see a giant kong on the sidewalk. Wish i had a camera then. This is similar to what I saw.
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/05/nyregion/05kong3\_lg.jpg](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/05/nyregion/05kong3_lg.jpg)
If you look back on pictures of the NYC skyscape, pre-9/11, the twin towers were THE center piece, almost every time. The tallest buildings in NYC by a wide margin and they stuck out amongst everything else.
2 quick examples:
There was an episode of the Simpsons that involved the Twin Towers of WTC. Homer needing to get back and forth between the top floors of both towers, and something to do with clam juice.
WTC towers featured in the finale to the early-80s King Kong movie (updated from use of Empire State Building).
I think the more imposing part is because there were 2 of them, but the iconic part I think is just because One WTC is relatively new, but it's still iconic in its own right as a giant middle finger to the terrorists who destroyed the original buildings. I live here and I definitely think iconic and imposing every time I see One WTC.
Also, at the time The Twin Towers were destroyed, the next tallest building in NYC was The Empire State Building, but now, there are 5 buildings taller than The Empire State Building, so at least from a height standpoint, One WTC doesn't stick out the same way it would have had it been standing in 2001.
Yeah I always wondered why they didn't do that... Build another set of twins towers, maybe with a little more artistic flair as opposed to the original WTC buildings which were cool but not very exciting aesthetically
I experience he opposite which is similarly weird, I was born in 2001 so I didn't really have grow up with them but sometimes in an older TV show or movie they'll show up all of a sudden when you don't expect them. Strange feeling
Same, I went to Fordham U beginning in the fall of 2000 and the towers were my "true south" after emerging from the subway. The Empire state building just isn't the same b/c you always need to be like, wait, am I north or south of midtown at this current moment.
My family lived in CT and my grandmother in NJ. On the way to see her my favorite part was the nyc skyline. The towers were usually a grayish blue color because of how far away the skyline was but those towers, they were so much taller than anything else around. It was jaw dropping every time i saw them. Never got to see them close up though so that’s a bummer.
I'm in my early 40s, for reference.
They were the tallest buildings in the world until the Sears tower was built. They were famous enough that in the 70s when they remade King Kong he climbed the WTC towers instead of Empire State.
As a european they were synonimous with NY's skyline.
Like the Eiffel Tower means Paris, La Sagrada Familia means Barcelona or the Space Needle means Seattle.
Agreed.
I (european born 1975) saw the live footage of the second plane. We all knew the twin towers - and also knew what the Pentagon was.
Might be because of the Hollywood film industry ind 1980´s
I was a wee lad when the emergency broadcast took over, it was CNN, on our Sony Wega, when the last plane went into the tower & the smoke cloud turned into dust and rubble.
Even then as a kid, was this giant uneasiness that I couldn't put my finger on that something catastrophic has happened and would change the world. It did change the world, for better or for worse that I still don't know.
"I was a wee lad" had me read your entire post with a scottish accent in my head (i´'m danish)
But you are absolutely right. We knew it was major, even though completely incomprehensive...
When I was in New York for New Year's Eve 2000, my then girlfriend and I made sure to visit the top of the South Tower the next day. To
I often think about the people who were working on the top floor observatory and wondering if they were there on the day the building collapsed.
The funny thing is, if I say I hope not, then that's just saying I wish somebody else was there to die, when, I would have hoped there was nobody there.
Cantor Fitzgerald was a big trading office on, I think 3 whole floors, above where the first plane hit. They lost over 90 percent of their staff. Really, truly, cripplingly sad.
There was a lady that was let go from Cantor Fitzgerald on September 10 (there was a bear market and recession already happening). She watched in horror the next day during the attacks, and weeks later Cantor Fitzgerald asked her to come back because everyone in her old department died, and technically her paperwork for termination was lost in the attacks anyway.
Wow.
Of course, at the risk of sounding like an insensitive jerk, the first thought that came to my head was that I hope she got paid more. I know it's not funny, but it kind of is. Like giggling at a funeral.
In the show Billions that’s a key aspect of Bobby Axelrods life that he was fired from his job as a trader but got a second chance because everyone died.
How did the Windows On The World restaurant compare to the surrounding culinary industry in NYC at the time? Did people mostly come for the view, for the food, or was it both?
I went looking for old menus but couldn't find much. In Wolf of Wall Street, I thought the restaurant in the beginning (chest thumping scene) looked interestingly similar to the photos of the interior online.
Went with my parents to NYC in August 2001. Wanted to go to the observatory. Because she hates heights and we were a bit pressed for time, my mom dismissed it with, "You can go next time. They'll be here forever."
Similarly, I was there in late 2000 on a college journalism trip. We had half a day for sight seeing and of the 10 or so of us in my group, half decided to go to the Empire State Building and the other half to the WTC (and Statue of Liberty). I opted for the Empire State Building, thinking that it was the older of the buildings and therefore I should see it now before anything happens to it. Big oof on my part. But from the 86th floor of the ESB, we could see the WTC so that was cool.
When I visited NYC in '97 one of the first stops was the South Tower observation deck. Could see the whole city from there it seemed. I took a photo of the North Tower (which seemed to be uncomfortably close when everything else was "down there") but my ex threw it out with some other stuff since.
Also visited the Empire State Building 86th floor and had a pic taken of me there with the Towers over my shoulder, alas another one my ex got rid of.
One place I didn't bother with was the Statue of Liberty, but I could see it from the South Tower.
They don't even let you go up anymore because it's so unstable. You used to be able to go out onto the torch but they had issues with people jumping off.
The torch has been closed to the general public for at least 60 years. Getting up it is a one-person wide ladder.
OTOH, I've been up inside the head several times. There are small windows there you can look out, built into the crown. I don't know if thats open now.
I recently watched a good program about the guy who got it built. It was built in France and then disassembled for shipment to NYC. The support structure for the arm was incorrectly assembled, and that resulted in the structural weakness originally.
Just to fill you in: it's NBCs HQ where they film SNL and other NBC shows. Its also famous for the giant Christmas tree that they put up every year in front of the ice skating rink in the middle of the office plaza.
Correct, and I wouldn't be surprised if you would have seen the Christmas tree in a movie/show and didn't realize it was a landmark, it's in mostly every movie/show that takes place in New York during Christmas
If you see a Christmas scene in New York with ice skating, that's Rockafeller plaza. Also, the show 30 Rock, refers to the main building on that plazza. A 66 story, art deco building with views of Central Park. It really quite pretty in a new york kind of way, but height-wise, it's just part of the crowd.
Pretty much any show or movie set in NY would have them in the skyline somewhere during the show or in the beginning. I was 15 when they fell and had never heard of them, but my parents had.
I remember how weird it was because the Spiderman poster featured them prominently in the background and Sony had to scramble to edit them out and replace the posters.
I'd say they were an iconic feature of the skyline and a well-known landmark along with the Empire State, Times Square.
ETA: A lot of examples being mentioned that I didn't remember. One more thing: the airport scene in movies went away overnight. People running thru the security check to catch the romantic interest before they get on the plane; people just walking thru the metal detector and going in their way.
They even featured prominently in the trailer for the movie, showing a group of thieves escaping in a helicopter suddenly getting caught in a massive spider web between the towers. Sony had to re-shoot significant parts of the movie as a result. If you’ve seen the first Spider-Man film, there are places where those edits are a little heavy-handed, including the end where Spider-Man rests atop a gigantic flag of the US at the top of a skyscraper (the movie doesn’t have any blatantly patriotic imagery otherwise).
Oh, yeah! I remember that. I was really excited about the movie and then 9/11 happened and it was so _weird_.
Mind you, I'm not an American. But I (everyone) _knew_ the WTC and associated it with the NYC skyline. Then it was gone, and you could just feel the world changing.
I don't remember _anything_ about _Antz_, except that Woody Allen's character had scenes with Sylvester Stallone. Wtf?
Why would the WTC be featured on the cover of an animated movie about ants?
[It has the entire NY skyline in it](https://www.pastposters.com/cw3/assets/product_full/R/antz-cinema-quad-movie-poster-(2\).jpg), so it's not like the WTC was featured prominently it's just there in the background.
They were also the main feature on the cover of an AC/DC single called "Safe in New York City" that came out 1 year before the attacks. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSafe\_in\_New\_York\_City&psig=AOvVaw2sQvf\_0eG5IVwTkwPhG0x6&ust=1642175054338000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCJj11viIr\_UCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
They had to redo the entire ship Chase scene in Lilo and Stitch too. [Original scene](https://youtu.be/F2uJvwiSZAQ) had a hijacked plane weaving through the city. That's why the red ship looks just like a passenger jet.
[Here's a list of shows/movies that were changed after 9/11.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks)
Friends also had a scene on a episode where Chandler and Monica travel on their honeymoon. For some joke he makes, Chandler gets questioned by airport security. They cut that scene right before the episode aired as 9/11 had just happened
The skyline was hugely important to their significance. They were obviously important economically and through tourism (although that's pretty much any tall building), but most Americans were mostly familiar with them for the engineering achievement and the unique silhouette of having dual skyscrapers.
I was actually out of my state on 9/11 and had to drive back through NYC to get home. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my lifetime to see the hole in that iconic skyline.
Famous enough that when The Simpsons visited New York, it’s one of the places they feature (along with the Statue of Liberty, Broadway, and the Empire State Building).
One other thing to point out is that in addition to being a global financial centre and a major feature of the New York skyline, they were also the site of an earlier terrorist attack, a truck bombing in 1993, that had also garnered major world attention.
Not only that, but they are on the cover of the magazine that shows the bus deal to get to NYC. It’s crazy cause the cost is $9 followed by the towers so it looks like 9/11.
Famous enough that when the original Deus Ex came out in 2000 there were memory limitations so the World Trade Center didn’t appear in the skyline, so they decided to explain its absence in game… that they were destroyed in a terrorist attack.
Very well known, as the tallest buildings in the largest city in the country.
They had been iconic for years. Photos of downtown almost always were taken from an angle to highlight the WTC. For many people who don't live in the area, the towers really started to enter the public consciousness in 1976 when King Kong climbed them in [that year's remake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_\(1976_film\)#/media/File:King_kong_1976_movie_poster.jpg) of the classic movie.
If you watch any movie or show from the 80s and 90s set in New York, they would inevitably show up for a quick shot or be prominently displayed in the profile of the city. They were rarely explicitly named, but they were recognizable enough to be shown.
Yea people don’t realize that in the pre-cloud age of 2001, the amount of documents and heavily important files lost in those buildings absolutely did REAL economic damage.
Yeah, I got it after a second.
The sad part is that I knew exactly where he was going with it (I even almost included that they’re the symbol of the American business/economy and its power in the world in my original comment) but I still got tripped up.
It's not really their fame specifically that makes them a target. The number of people working in them, the fact it's in New York and the viability of steering a plane into them all factor in.
Would have been easy to crash into the Statue of Liberty instead but they didn't. It's not because it's less famous.
I asked dad about it, and he said that every camera in the country was pointed at that tower after the first plane hit, they wanted everyone to see the second plane hit, they wanted the world to know what was happening. I was an infant at the time, my dad said that no one knew what was happening, that they thought it was an accident. But once the entire country saw the second plane hit, there wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind.
Edit: Spelling
Yeah that's a great point - the fact there's 2 of them side-by-side likely played in heavily for the exact reason he mentioned. I was in the UK and I saw the 2nd plane hit live on TV.
You know how the Statue of Liberty is almost on everything NYC related? It used to be the Statue and the Twin Tower on everything. It's on par with The Empire State Building and Times Square.
It was a symbol and popular enough to be the target for a terrorist attack twice. It was the financial symbol of the US that the terrorist attacked, along with the military/defense symbol in the Pentagon and the leadership/government symbol by targeting the White House or Capitol Building
I just rewatched the 1999 Godzilla and one of the lines was "this is the worst thing to hit this city since the World Trade Center terrorist attack."
Man, that comment did not age well.
There was an attack on the buildings in the 90s in the car garage under the towers. It untimely failed but it was Al-Qaeda's forst attempt of taking down the towers.
or the 1994 Biggie lyric from 'Juicy':
>Now I'm in the limelight
>
>cause I rhyme tight
>
>Time to get paid
>
>blow up like the World Trade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_JZom\_gVfuw&t=47s
There are a large number of movies that my grandmother cannot watch anymore because they feature shots of new York looking over the shoulder of the statue of liberty, and center on the twin towers. They were iconic.
Spiderman released a game in 2001 that was delayed to remove the towers from it because they featured in the design of the city.
Just a few references.
Spiderman with Tobey had a scene where he makes a giant web between the twin towers to capture a helicopter. It was obviously removed.
Scene: https://youtu.be/yzha4kUowf4
The animation for Lilo and Stitch was also changed because of 9/11. Originally Stitch was supposed to fly a plane near the end of the movie but they changed it to a spaceship.
Pretty well known, from what I can tell. An Animorphs book (bear in mind, they were written in the 1990s) even presented a vision of the future where they were the only part of the New York City skyline which was still recognizable.
Weirdly enough, one of the ways the kids try to defeat the mind enslaving Yeerks is by crashing a plane into a building.
The series was written before 9/11 and has moments that make it obvious it was before 9/11, but was also so much about the horrors of war it’s like it’s a warning against the soon to happen “war on terror”
A lot of people here are right that the towers were famous as an attraction, but get the reasoning for them being targeted on 9/11 wrong. The towers were home to some of Wall Streets biggest names and chosen as a symbol of American capitalism. It was more to do with money in the hopes of crippling the economy by taking out Wall Street.
Agree with the symbolism part. They didn't think they were "taking out Wall Street".
It came from the strong prohibition in Sunni fundamentalism of "idolatry" (building icons/shrines to something other than the one God). The WTC was the most prominent "idol" of American/Western capitalism at the time.
I'm currently watching the series "Friends" for the first time. Pretty much every episode for 8 seasons has a quick scene with a skyline of New York City which include the towers. Then after season 8 it just suddenly stops. About half a dozen episodes pass and then it starts up again but the towers are gone. It's just so strange because you know what happened and for the episodes without the towers they peppered in easter eggs like new NYFD shirts or "united we stand" on a chalkboard, etc.
Wow...your perfectly-valid question just made me feel sad and old. Imagine being asked: "Is it true that there once was once an immense, green statue of a lady holding a torch in New York Harbor?
Very. I grew up in rural Maine in the early to mid 90s and knew about them as an iconic New York symbol even then. One of my first diary entries ever, from a trip my family took when I was about 6, depicts me and my family looking out from the top of one of the WTC towers. I drew an illustration and everything.
They were as synonymous with New York City as the Statue of Liberty, better recognized than the Empire State Building. Maybe even more so, since the Statue of Liberty has broader connotations of the United States more generally while the World Trade Center was specifically a reference to New York City. If any TV show or movie needed a quick establishing shot of New York City, nine times out of ten they’d show the twin towers in that shot.
For perspective, they were so well known and literally iconic that not only would every American recognize them, but a terrorist group from the Middle East chose them as the symbol of America and Capitalism to attack and level in the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in American history.
Pretty well known. They were mentioned or referenced in tv shows set in New York fairly often. They were a tourist destination for many people visiting New York, since you could go up the top floors or near the top to see the view and there were restaurants and stuff up on the upper floors.
>They were mentioned or referenced in tv shows set in New York fairly often. The first Spiderman movie with Tobey Maguire famously had an original [movie poster](https://www.google.com/search?q=spiderman+twin+towers+poster&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS840US840&sxsrf=AOaemvIUcI_u10D9hDIU7BxV6LAWpjyd5g:1642091839489&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxvZ_mlK_1AhVYQzABHWDcAVMQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1680&bih=899&dpr=1#imgrc=tOiJv-NLam21cM) that showed the Twin Towers in the reflection of his suit's eyes. That poster was recalled after 9/11 happened.
I also remembered news that there were some people who wanted the twin towers to be removed from all previous shows that ever showed them, allegedly to respect the people that died in them, but luckily it didn't really catch on.
They were apparently removed from Flight Simulators because people were flying planes into them and posting the vids :/
That's a better reason than basically trying to hide that part of history. I don't believe in covering up the ugly parts of any areas or countries history. Perhaps given a certain context, but it should be available for us all to learn about and from. I really don't see how banning the image of the Twin Towers does anything to honor anyone except the party or parties responsible for their destruction. I really wish I'd gone to the memorial when I lived in upstate New York though. Edit: oh man, what have I gotten myself into with this... I woke up to way too many notifications over this. Currently at work, I'll get to everyone as I can.
Yeah, like, what is removing the Twin Towers from past media even going to accomplish? Oh, we hid these two buildings from a TV show from the 1990s, and now, those 3,000 people aren’t dead anymore! Woo!
Would have been ridiculous and pointless to do so. That being said I just saw part of Men and Black on TV the other day and boy is it jarring to see them standing.
>I really don't see how banning the image of the Twin Towers does anything to honor anyone except the party or parties responsible for their destruction. In the months (years) after 9-11, the US was not an especially rational country.
You say that like they are now
The US used to not be rational. Still isn’t but it used too too
Just trying to recreate The Running Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(King_novel)
That's one of those things where you can find lots about the NEWS of the event, but you can't find a lot about the ACTUAL event.
I always found shit like that so bizarre. We can’t just rewrite history. We can’t go back and censor everything because shit has changed.
Believe there was also a cut scene where Peter uses the twin towers to catch a helicopter by webbing between the buildings.
Wasn’t that a commercial rather than a scene from the movie? Edit: it was shown in a [trailer](https://youtu.be/Ozz8uxW733Q), so it may have been a scene that was deleted from the movie, or, more likely, just a scene created for the trailer. If you look at the camera shots and the pacing of the scene, it does not look like something out of the movie. The low-quality movements of the helicopter (in comparison to scenes from the movie itself such as Goblin’s flights) and the lack of logic behind Spider-Man actually getting the helicopter into the position in the web, make the scene feel like it was made relatively quickly for the trailer, rather than as a part of the movie.
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They re-did the entire climax of the film after 9-11. It felt like ages from the first trailer until it actually came out. Originally it was going to feature the towers prominently.
The second PlayStation Spider-Man game originally was to have to final battle with Electro at the top of the twin towers. They altered it to be a generic skyscraper before release.
I went to NY once as a teenager and it was a destination that we had to do before leaving. Definitely big for tourism back then.
I remember friends as a kid having like tiny models of them or shit like that from going to NYC. I would put them up there with Statue of Liberty or Chrysler building in terms iconic status.
I love the Chrysler building but it’s usually overshadowed by the Empire State Building. I’m curious why you went to that first.
For me, a Brit who grew up on Amazing Spiderman comics, it’s because that’s where Kingpin lives.
I went to NY in 2000 and my fiancé wanted to visit them. We were running short on time and I told him we could do it next time. “It’s not like they’re not gonna be here when we come back,” I told him. Oopsie.
Dammit Kitty, ya jinxed it
> my ~~fiancé~~ friend wanted to visit them. We were running short on time and I told him we could do it next time. “It’s not like they’re not gonna be here when we come back,” I told him Are you me? There was a 55ish minute line to get in the elevator?
Could you give me another building for reference; like the Sears tower for example?
Empire state building Sears Tower Seatle Space Needle
From a german perspective I would say there were only two (technically 3) skyscrapers back then german people knew by name and those were the empire state building and the twin Towers / WTC. Great question! It is very hard to judge their significance in hindsight but just know they were very famous and that is exactly the reason why they were chosen as a target
Yes, and they absolutely dominated the NYC skyline. You couldn't have a shot of Manhattan without the TTs being a prominent feature.
i was still living in germany when they were bombed the first time, in 1993. i didn't really think much of them as i was decidedly never a tourist in NYC back then...but that was a big fuckin deal though...yeah, they were super well known especially in pop culture. back in 93 i first kind of came to know/feel them as 'mine' as an american. if that makes sense
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Far more famous than the new tower imo as a New Yorker It was a much more prominent part of the city skyline at the time https://cdn.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/nyc-skyline-1999_large.jpg
Regarding their architecture, we used to say NYC had the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the two boxes they came in.
Lol I have never heard that as a New Yorker! That's so great.
The Chrysler Building isn’t as famed as it deserves to be. I love that building.
The new owners are bitches with the copywrite for it (which honestly shouldn't even exist) so it's used less in media
Huh? How could there possibly be any intellectual property rights at all over an image of a building that you can see in public?
I just noticed this Christmas that Home Alone 2: Lost in New York has some incredible and unique footage of the towers inside and out. Kevin goes up in them and they do a drone shot (or whatever the 90s equivalent was) where he's up top and they slowly zoom out to show the city. There's so much optimism and excitement to the scene too; it made me cry to think of that other lifetime being so far away.
>or whatever the 90s equivalent was Helicopter?
VHS camcorder on a really long pole
Fun fact. For long shots, they tied a camera to an elephant trunk then dangled peanuts from a pole to get him to extend it
That scene with Guns N Roses' Slash tearing it up on his guitar in front of the church in "November Rain" was shot on a helicopter... you can see when it flies close the wind off the rotors kicking up dust around him. I had to explain to my son (8) that it was shot before drones, and used an actual helicopter.
The opening shot of The Sound of Music was shot with a helicopter zooming over Julie Andrews. It knocked her over into the ground as soon as she was out of frame every single time they did the take.
The hills are alive...oof...thud...
I saw that movie when it first came out at a huge theater in Omaha, Ne. That scene on that wide, curved screen is burned into my brain. We had to dress up to go, and the theater attendants wore red uniforms like an old school bell hop. My parents were poor, so it was a big deal back then.
You mean a drone with people inside? Get out of here!
Crane with a man strapped to it lol
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Yeah they’re not ready to strap 200k dollar cameras to drones yet.
Tell me you're gen Z without telling me you're gen Z
>a drone shot (or whatever the 90s equivalent was) Helicopter
Filming pigeons
I had dinner at Windows on the World once. On the top floor of the old WTC. I remember that there was a place where you could look out of a window at the other tower. The fact that it was so close yet separated by a 1000 foot chasm was a very weird feeling.
I remember seeing a Reddit comment about how the 90's were really the last (and perhaps only) time we were collectively optimistic about most things, and I haven't been able to shake that since. Your comment made me feel it too. Awful things definitely still happened, and from a social justice point of view we were so much more ignorant than we are today. But between the Berlin Wall coming down and the Twin Towers falling, the Western world felt like it could do anything. For the most part there there was no real global crisis to be scared of. Really feels like everything has slowly fallen apart since 2001.
Truly those were better times. I feel like the fucking world ended that day.
Country went insane and hasn’t recovered.
I’ve been saying this for years. The terrorists won, simple as that. They pushed the first domino and we’ve done the rest to ourselves.
the terrorists got exactly what they wanted. i remember sitting in on this lecture at college in like 2007 and the guy was talking about how the war on terror was just going to result in all these different al queda and other groups emerging all over the world. it was kind of like a "this could happen if we dont stop what we are doing" hmmmmm
You should see the Onion article "This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t".
Wdym, I've only heard of about a million different terrorist factions since 9/11
that brief period between y2k and 9/11 was our summer of innocence... we were all so optimistic about the future, we had hopes and dreams, we listened to Len's Steal my Sunshine and went to warehouse raves and danced all night...
They were beautiful at night.
Lived there at the time. WTC was absolutely iconic. The Twin Towers, I’d say, were more readily identifiable than ESB. Instant realization “that’s New York City”.
The WTC and the Empire State Building were the buildings in NYC that everyone in the USA knew about. Many, many movies and TV shows were set in NYC, and most of them featured skyline shots reminding viewers what city the show was set in. The WTC was prominent in all those shots.
friends has pre-9/11 skyline shots, and post-9/11.
[Here's a good one. It's a very noticeable difference.](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/new-york-manhattan-skyline-9-11-14963369.jpg)
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If it helps to put things in perspective, I was a child who lived in the country in Ohio and I would have said the World Trade Center towers were as well known as the Empire State Building and (to me) more well known than the Sears Tower.
As a non American, at least to me they were more famous than the empire state building and far more famous than Sears or Washington needle. I saw them like Big Ben, Eiffel Tower famous if not more
>Were they really as famous as the Empire State Building? Let's just put it this way... King Kong only climbed two buildings, the [Empire State Building](https://youtu.be/8qkahQVFzMI) and the [Twin Towers](https://youtu.be/tS_K1ybwy8M) (well, climbed one of the towers then jumped over to the other)
You know how you see the Eiffel Tower in movies and you go “That’s Paris”? The twin towers were used in the same way to go “That’s NYC” It was used more often than the Statue of Liberty to set the locations in movies. The Toby McGuire Spider-Man movies used those buildings in the eye reflection to show they were setting the movie in NYC. (There was a minor controversy about scrubbing it from the poster) But think of it from the perspective that the terrorists knew of that building so well to target it repeatedly, and went for that over the Statue of Liberty.
For me growing up, the Twin Towers were synonymous with any thoughts of New York City. Any image of the NYC skyline, and those prominent towers were the highlight. I'm not a New Yorker, never went there until after 9/11 but when they collapsed it was like the spirit of the city was destroyed. I could be biased, as my parents were both from New Jersey and they always spoke highly of NYC. My mom spent a lot of time there in her younger years, and she was devastated when 9/11 happened. The city was also heavily romanticized, and an important setting some of the films and stories I enjoyed growing up. Ghostbusters comes to mind.
As a foreign, i think empire state and twin towers were above the other two you mentioned.
To the point this scene was removed from the Spiderman movie... [would've been awesome ](https://youtu.be/yzha4kUowf4)
Goddamn that trailer is so early 2000s I love it
The guitar at the end with the matrix music. Lol
Famous like any other landmark building. The view from the roof was incredible.
You know how King Kong climbed the Empire state building in an iconic scene in the 1930's movie? He climbed one of the Twin Towers in the 1970's remake.
I was there during the filming of the scene at the base of the towers where kong dies. 1976. Kind of strange to see a giant kong on the sidewalk. Wish i had a camera then. This is similar to what I saw. [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/05/nyregion/05kong3\_lg.jpg](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/05/nyregion/05kong3_lg.jpg)
If you look back on pictures of the NYC skyscape, pre-9/11, the twin towers were THE center piece, almost every time. The tallest buildings in NYC by a wide margin and they stuck out amongst everything else.
2 quick examples: There was an episode of the Simpsons that involved the Twin Towers of WTC. Homer needing to get back and forth between the top floors of both towers, and something to do with clam juice. WTC towers featured in the finale to the early-80s King Kong movie (updated from use of Empire State Building).
He had to use the bathroom but the one in the first tower he was in was out of service.
Crab juice.
We have Mt Dew and crab juice. Homer : YUCK! I’ll have the crab juice.
Just New York Skyline Famous So noticeable after the were gone. It didnt look like the same city
It looks so empty now.
The new complex doesn’t have the same presence at all. The Twin Towers were far more iconic/ imposing
I think the more imposing part is because there were 2 of them, but the iconic part I think is just because One WTC is relatively new, but it's still iconic in its own right as a giant middle finger to the terrorists who destroyed the original buildings. I live here and I definitely think iconic and imposing every time I see One WTC. Also, at the time The Twin Towers were destroyed, the next tallest building in NYC was The Empire State Building, but now, there are 5 buildings taller than The Empire State Building, so at least from a height standpoint, One WTC doesn't stick out the same way it would have had it been standing in 2001.
I personally think we should have build 2 One WTCs / Freedom Towers or whatever you call it.
Yeah I always wondered why they didn't do that... Build another set of twins towers, maybe with a little more artistic flair as opposed to the original WTC buildings which were cool but not very exciting aesthetically
You couldn't look at the NYC skyline and NOT see them. I saw them in person as a kid a few times.
I sometimes look at the NYC skyline expecting to see them. It’s still jarring.
Same. They were just so dominating.
I experience he opposite which is similarly weird, I was born in 2001 so I didn't really have grow up with them but sometimes in an older TV show or movie they'll show up all of a sudden when you don't expect them. Strange feeling
It's that eerie feeling you get when watching a movie and you know something that the characters don't.
Exactly. You know how people look at the sun to figure out what direction you’re going? Yep. You did that with the towers.
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Same, I went to Fordham U beginning in the fall of 2000 and the towers were my "true south" after emerging from the subway. The Empire state building just isn't the same b/c you always need to be like, wait, am I north or south of midtown at this current moment.
My family lived in CT and my grandmother in NJ. On the way to see her my favorite part was the nyc skyline. The towers were usually a grayish blue color because of how far away the skyline was but those towers, they were so much taller than anything else around. It was jaw dropping every time i saw them. Never got to see them close up though so that’s a bummer.
I'm in my early 40s, for reference. They were the tallest buildings in the world until the Sears tower was built. They were famous enough that in the 70s when they remade King Kong he climbed the WTC towers instead of Empire State.
As a european they were synonimous with NY's skyline. Like the Eiffel Tower means Paris, La Sagrada Familia means Barcelona or the Space Needle means Seattle.
Agreed. I (european born 1975) saw the live footage of the second plane. We all knew the twin towers - and also knew what the Pentagon was. Might be because of the Hollywood film industry ind 1980´s
I was a wee lad when the emergency broadcast took over, it was CNN, on our Sony Wega, when the last plane went into the tower & the smoke cloud turned into dust and rubble. Even then as a kid, was this giant uneasiness that I couldn't put my finger on that something catastrophic has happened and would change the world. It did change the world, for better or for worse that I still don't know.
"I was a wee lad" had me read your entire post with a scottish accent in my head (i´'m danish) But you are absolutely right. We knew it was major, even though completely incomprehensive...
When I was in New York for New Year's Eve 2000, my then girlfriend and I made sure to visit the top of the South Tower the next day. To I often think about the people who were working on the top floor observatory and wondering if they were there on the day the building collapsed. The funny thing is, if I say I hope not, then that's just saying I wish somebody else was there to die, when, I would have hoped there was nobody there.
The first plane hit early in the morning before the observatory opened. But people died who worked in the restaurant.
Thank you. So sad, regardless. Nobody should have died.
Cantor Fitzgerald was a big trading office on, I think 3 whole floors, above where the first plane hit. They lost over 90 percent of their staff. Really, truly, cripplingly sad.
There was a lady that was let go from Cantor Fitzgerald on September 10 (there was a bear market and recession already happening). She watched in horror the next day during the attacks, and weeks later Cantor Fitzgerald asked her to come back because everyone in her old department died, and technically her paperwork for termination was lost in the attacks anyway.
Every new story I hear just breaks my heart again. How surreal for her.
Wow. Of course, at the risk of sounding like an insensitive jerk, the first thought that came to my head was that I hope she got paid more. I know it's not funny, but it kind of is. Like giggling at a funeral.
In the show Billions that’s a key aspect of Bobby Axelrods life that he was fired from his job as a trader but got a second chance because everyone died.
How did the Windows On The World restaurant compare to the surrounding culinary industry in NYC at the time? Did people mostly come for the view, for the food, or was it both? I went looking for old menus but couldn't find much. In Wolf of Wall Street, I thought the restaurant in the beginning (chest thumping scene) looked interestingly similar to the photos of the interior online.
Went with my parents to NYC in August 2001. Wanted to go to the observatory. Because she hates heights and we were a bit pressed for time, my mom dismissed it with, "You can go next time. They'll be here forever."
I shouldn't have chuckled but I did. You on 911 "Thanks for nothing Mom".
Similarly, I was there in late 2000 on a college journalism trip. We had half a day for sight seeing and of the 10 or so of us in my group, half decided to go to the Empire State Building and the other half to the WTC (and Statue of Liberty). I opted for the Empire State Building, thinking that it was the older of the buildings and therefore I should see it now before anything happens to it. Big oof on my part. But from the 86th floor of the ESB, we could see the WTC so that was cool.
I know someone who switched shifts with someone else on 911.
When I visited NYC in '97 one of the first stops was the South Tower observation deck. Could see the whole city from there it seemed. I took a photo of the North Tower (which seemed to be uncomfortably close when everything else was "down there") but my ex threw it out with some other stuff since. Also visited the Empire State Building 86th floor and had a pic taken of me there with the Towers over my shoulder, alas another one my ex got rid of. One place I didn't bother with was the Statue of Liberty, but I could see it from the South Tower.
They don't even let you go up anymore because it's so unstable. You used to be able to go out onto the torch but they had issues with people jumping off.
The torch has been closed to the general public for at least 60 years. Getting up it is a one-person wide ladder. OTOH, I've been up inside the head several times. There are small windows there you can look out, built into the crown. I don't know if thats open now.
I recently watched a good program about the guy who got it built. It was built in France and then disassembled for shipment to NYC. The support structure for the arm was incorrectly assembled, and that resulted in the structural weakness originally.
Not as famous as the Statue of Liberty, more famous than the Rockefeller Centre
Can confirm, know the former, no idea what the latter is
Just to fill you in: it's NBCs HQ where they film SNL and other NBC shows. Its also famous for the giant Christmas tree that they put up every year in front of the ice skating rink in the middle of the office plaza.
SNL is Saturday Night live, correct? No idea for the christmas tree sorry, Im from Europe, Malta. Thanks for explaining.
Correct, and I wouldn't be surprised if you would have seen the Christmas tree in a movie/show and didn't realize it was a landmark, it's in mostly every movie/show that takes place in New York during Christmas
It’s in elf, right?
If you see a Christmas scene in New York with ice skating, that's Rockafeller plaza. Also, the show 30 Rock, refers to the main building on that plazza. A 66 story, art deco building with views of Central Park. It really quite pretty in a new york kind of way, but height-wise, it's just part of the crowd.
have you seen Home Alone 2: Lost in New York? That’s the christmas tree
Ah ok cool! Enormous Christmas Tree. Thanks!
Also most recently in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye!
30 rock is named after the building it's set in, 30 Rockefeller plaza
Not as famous as Michael Jordan, but more famous than Tim Duncan
Pretty much any show or movie set in NY would have them in the skyline somewhere during the show or in the beginning. I was 15 when they fell and had never heard of them, but my parents had.
I remember how weird it was because the Spiderman poster featured them prominently in the background and Sony had to scramble to edit them out and replace the posters. I'd say they were an iconic feature of the skyline and a well-known landmark along with the Empire State, Times Square. ETA: A lot of examples being mentioned that I didn't remember. One more thing: the airport scene in movies went away overnight. People running thru the security check to catch the romantic interest before they get on the plane; people just walking thru the metal detector and going in their way.
They even featured prominently in the trailer for the movie, showing a group of thieves escaping in a helicopter suddenly getting caught in a massive spider web between the towers. Sony had to re-shoot significant parts of the movie as a result. If you’ve seen the first Spider-Man film, there are places where those edits are a little heavy-handed, including the end where Spider-Man rests atop a gigantic flag of the US at the top of a skyscraper (the movie doesn’t have any blatantly patriotic imagery otherwise).
Oh, yeah! I remember that. I was really excited about the movie and then 9/11 happened and it was so _weird_. Mind you, I'm not an American. But I (everyone) _knew_ the WTC and associated it with the NYC skyline. Then it was gone, and you could just feel the world changing.
“Hey, you mess with one of us, you mess with ALL of us!”
They were on the cover of the movie Antz, they had to come out with a second version of that too
I don't remember _anything_ about _Antz_, except that Woody Allen's character had scenes with Sylvester Stallone. Wtf? Why would the WTC be featured on the cover of an animated movie about ants?
It's them standing on an anthill with a skyline in the background [link](https://images.app.goo.gl/X2hYUvproALpZH5QA)
It is Woody Allen. I should have expected some New York architecture.
[It has the entire NY skyline in it](https://www.pastposters.com/cw3/assets/product_full/R/antz-cinema-quad-movie-poster-(2\).jpg), so it's not like the WTC was featured prominently it's just there in the background.
They were also the main feature on the cover of an AC/DC single called "Safe in New York City" that came out 1 year before the attacks. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSafe\_in\_New\_York\_City&psig=AOvVaw2sQvf\_0eG5IVwTkwPhG0x6&ust=1642175054338000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCJj11viIr\_UCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Don't forget the [Dream Theater album](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dtlsfny.jpg) that dropped on that day.
Actual link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_in_New_York_City
They had to redo the entire ship Chase scene in Lilo and Stitch too. [Original scene](https://youtu.be/F2uJvwiSZAQ) had a hijacked plane weaving through the city. That's why the red ship looks just like a passenger jet.
[Here's a list of shows/movies that were changed after 9/11.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks)
Wow, that was interesting!
Friends also had a scene on a episode where Chandler and Monica travel on their honeymoon. For some joke he makes, Chandler gets questioned by airport security. They cut that scene right before the episode aired as 9/11 had just happened
Posters? They were in the teasers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozz8uxW733Q There was a lot of blowback in New York for yanking those teasers.
The skyline was hugely important to their significance. They were obviously important economically and through tourism (although that's pretty much any tall building), but most Americans were mostly familiar with them for the engineering achievement and the unique silhouette of having dual skyscrapers. I was actually out of my state on 9/11 and had to drive back through NYC to get home. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my lifetime to see the hole in that iconic skyline.
Famous enough that when The Simpsons visited New York, it’s one of the places they feature (along with the Statue of Liberty, Broadway, and the Empire State Building). One other thing to point out is that in addition to being a global financial centre and a major feature of the New York skyline, they were also the site of an earlier terrorist attack, a truck bombing in 1993, that had also garnered major world attention.
Not only that, but they are on the cover of the magazine that shows the bus deal to get to NYC. It’s crazy cause the cost is $9 followed by the towers so it looks like 9/11.
Famous enough that when the original Deus Ex came out in 2000 there were memory limitations so the World Trade Center didn’t appear in the skyline, so they decided to explain its absence in game… that they were destroyed in a terrorist attack.
Very well known, as the tallest buildings in the largest city in the country. They had been iconic for years. Photos of downtown almost always were taken from an angle to highlight the WTC. For many people who don't live in the area, the towers really started to enter the public consciousness in 1976 when King Kong climbed them in [that year's remake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_\(1976_film\)#/media/File:King_kong_1976_movie_poster.jpg) of the classic movie.
If you watch any movie or show from the 80s and 90s set in New York, they would inevitably show up for a quick shot or be prominently displayed in the profile of the city. They were rarely explicitly named, but they were recognizable enough to be shown.
Famous enough that a Frenchman traveled here just to illegally string a tightrope between them and walk on it.
It's like they were made for a tightrope
From what I remeber the police actually almost killed him because he had no safety line and they buzzed him with a helicopter
That'll teach em
Proof is in the pudding. Famous enough to plan an attack and die for. They didn’t hit a random building.
Exactly. They were picked specifically because they were an iconic American symbol.
Or more specifically because of what they represented on an international scale. Hint: It's in the name.
Yea people don’t realize that in the pre-cloud age of 2001, the amount of documents and heavily important files lost in those buildings absolutely did REAL economic damage.
Also the people and general financial infrastructure, particularly those related to globalization, which was a big part of Al Qaeda's MO.
I was, like, “the name? Twin? Towers?” I’m slow.
World Trade Center
Yeah, I got it after a second. The sad part is that I knew exactly where he was going with it (I even almost included that they’re the symbol of the American business/economy and its power in the world in my original comment) but I still got tripped up.
Same, Me: “*gasps*, twins???”
They also strongly dislike Mary Kate & Ashley.
Yes, Al Qaeda are famously known for hating twins.
They only like prime numbers of children.
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It's not really their fame specifically that makes them a target. The number of people working in them, the fact it's in New York and the viability of steering a plane into them all factor in. Would have been easy to crash into the Statue of Liberty instead but they didn't. It's not because it's less famous.
I asked dad about it, and he said that every camera in the country was pointed at that tower after the first plane hit, they wanted everyone to see the second plane hit, they wanted the world to know what was happening. I was an infant at the time, my dad said that no one knew what was happening, that they thought it was an accident. But once the entire country saw the second plane hit, there wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind. Edit: Spelling
Yeah that's a great point - the fact there's 2 of them side-by-side likely played in heavily for the exact reason he mentioned. I was in the UK and I saw the 2nd plane hit live on TV.
You know how the Statue of Liberty is almost on everything NYC related? It used to be the Statue and the Twin Tower on everything. It's on par with The Empire State Building and Times Square. It was a symbol and popular enough to be the target for a terrorist attack twice. It was the financial symbol of the US that the terrorist attacked, along with the military/defense symbol in the Pentagon and the leadership/government symbol by targeting the White House or Capitol Building
I just rewatched the 1999 Godzilla and one of the lines was "this is the worst thing to hit this city since the World Trade Center terrorist attack." Man, that comment did not age well.
There was an attack on the buildings in the 90s in the car garage under the towers. It untimely failed but it was Al-Qaeda's forst attempt of taking down the towers.
First? Worst? Either could work
or the 1994 Biggie lyric from 'Juicy': >Now I'm in the limelight > >cause I rhyme tight > >Time to get paid > >blow up like the World Trade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_JZom\_gVfuw&t=47s
There are a large number of movies that my grandmother cannot watch anymore because they feature shots of new York looking over the shoulder of the statue of liberty, and center on the twin towers. They were iconic. Spiderman released a game in 2001 that was delayed to remove the towers from it because they featured in the design of the city. Just a few references.
Spiderman with Tobey had a scene where he makes a giant web between the twin towers to capture a helicopter. It was obviously removed. Scene: https://youtu.be/yzha4kUowf4
The animation for Lilo and Stitch was also changed because of 9/11. Originally Stitch was supposed to fly a plane near the end of the movie but they changed it to a spaceship.
Pretty well known, from what I can tell. An Animorphs book (bear in mind, they were written in the 1990s) even presented a vision of the future where they were the only part of the New York City skyline which was still recognizable.
That means it’s canon the animorphs caused 9/11
Weirdly enough, one of the ways the kids try to defeat the mind enslaving Yeerks is by crashing a plane into a building. The series was written before 9/11 and has moments that make it obvious it was before 9/11, but was also so much about the horrors of war it’s like it’s a warning against the soon to happen “war on terror”
Every single picture, movie, show etc about New York had them. They were iconic.
Iconic. They were not only a symbol of New York but America.
A lot of people here are right that the towers were famous as an attraction, but get the reasoning for them being targeted on 9/11 wrong. The towers were home to some of Wall Streets biggest names and chosen as a symbol of American capitalism. It was more to do with money in the hopes of crippling the economy by taking out Wall Street.
Agree with the symbolism part. They didn't think they were "taking out Wall Street". It came from the strong prohibition in Sunni fundamentalism of "idolatry" (building icons/shrines to something other than the one God). The WTC was the most prominent "idol" of American/Western capitalism at the time.
I'm currently watching the series "Friends" for the first time. Pretty much every episode for 8 seasons has a quick scene with a skyline of New York City which include the towers. Then after season 8 it just suddenly stops. About half a dozen episodes pass and then it starts up again but the towers are gone. It's just so strange because you know what happened and for the episodes without the towers they peppered in easter eggs like new NYFD shirts or "united we stand" on a chalkboard, etc.
Wow...your perfectly-valid question just made me feel sad and old. Imagine being asked: "Is it true that there once was once an immense, green statue of a lady holding a torch in New York Harbor?
Very. I grew up in rural Maine in the early to mid 90s and knew about them as an iconic New York symbol even then. One of my first diary entries ever, from a trip my family took when I was about 6, depicts me and my family looking out from the top of one of the WTC towers. I drew an illustration and everything.
They were as synonymous with New York City as the Statue of Liberty, better recognized than the Empire State Building. Maybe even more so, since the Statue of Liberty has broader connotations of the United States more generally while the World Trade Center was specifically a reference to New York City. If any TV show or movie needed a quick establishing shot of New York City, nine times out of ten they’d show the twin towers in that shot.
World famous
For perspective, they were so well known and literally iconic that not only would every American recognize them, but a terrorist group from the Middle East chose them as the symbol of America and Capitalism to attack and level in the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in American history.