Musashi was one of the Yamato-class battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy from the late 1930s. These were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing almost 72,000 long tons fully loaded and carrying nine 460-millimetre main guns. Commissioned in 1942, Musashi served as flagship of the Combined Fleet and later ferried forces between Japan and occupied islands. After an American submarine torpedoed her in early 1944, the navy heavily increased her anti-aircraft armament during repairs. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 American carrier aircraft hit her with an estimated 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs, and she sank with over half her crew rescued. Her wreck was not located until March 2015, when a team of researchers employed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen found it. The discovery gave a detailed view of the ship's fate.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.