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Anniyan ( ) is a 2005 Indian Tamil language-language psychological action thriller film directed by Shankar and produced by V. Ravichandran. The film stars Vikram as a meek law-abiding lawyer who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, and develops two other identities: a playboy fashion model, and a murderous vigilante hellbent on a mission of eradicating corruption. The cast also includes Sadha, Prakash Raj, Vivek, Nedumudi Venu, and Nassar.
Shankar conceived the film in mid-2003 during the post-production period of his previous film Boys. He based the film on his own life experiences during his formative years when he was disturbed by what he saw around him and his eventual displeasure with the society. Pre-production for Anniyan began in November 2003 and principal photography in March 2004. The making of the film, which included numerous production delays, took 14 months. The film was shot at Hyderabad, Thanjavur, Viluppuram and Chennai. The song sequences were filmed in Mumbai, Malaysia, Amsterdam and Tenkasi. The film was notable for its recreation of the Tyagaraja Aradhana music festival and the extensive use of time slice photography in an action sequence.
Cinematographer V. Manikandan discontinued the project halfway through, until he was replaced with Ravi Varman. The technical departments were headed by V. T. Vijayan (editing), Sabu Cyril (production design), and Peter Hein (action choreography). The soundtrack was composed by Harris Jayaraj, who was in his first collaboration with the director. The film was touted as the director's Masterpiece and was budgeted at 26.3 crore, making it the most expensive Indian film during the time of its release. Notably, it was the first South Indian film to obtain institutional finance, and it had the highest insurance coverage available for films at that time.
Anniyan was released on 17 June 2005 and became a commercial success, and in addition to winning a record breaking eight Filmfare Awards and six State Film Awards, it also won a National Award in the Special Effects category.
Ambi secretly loves his neighbor Nandini, an aspiring Carnatic music singer, but never expresses his feelings due to fear of rejection. When he gets the courage to propose to her during the annual Tyagaraja Aradhana with the help of his friend SI Chari, she rejects him as she cannot bear his overbearing nature, constant complaining, and nitpicking. Distraught, Ambi attempts suicide, almost drowning himself before having second thoughts. He subsequently develops another personality named Remo, a metrosexual fashion model. Nandini becomes smitten with Remo and falls in love with him, and their marriage is eventually fixed.
While purchasing a plot of land for her dowry, Nandini undervalues the property to evade stamp duty. Ambi, who accompanies her to the government office, refuses to help her. Later, when Nandini and Remo are on a date, Remo transforms into Anniyan and attempts to punish her for corruption. As Anniyan is about to kill her, Nandini calls out for Ambi and Anniyan reverts to Ambi, who collapses and loses consciousness. Nandini takes Ambi to NIMHANS, where he is diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Through recovered-memory therapy, Vijaykumar, the chief psychiatrist, uncovers Ambi's past. When Ambi was ten years old, he witnessed the accidental death of his younger sister Vidya due to civic apathy. The incident left a deep emotional scar, which was the reason for his lofty ideals. Vijaykumar realises that although Anniyan and Remo know about Ambi, albeit as a separate person, Ambi is oblivious to their existence within him. Vijaykumar declares that Remo will cease to exist if Nandini reciprocates Ambi's feelings, but Anniyan will cease to exist only when society reforms. Nandini accepts Ambi's love and Remo disappears.
Meanwhile, DCP Prabhakar and Chari investigate the murders committed by Anniyan. In disguises, they discover clues left behind by Anniyan, which are the names of the punishments meted out to victims. Prabhakar is personally determined to punish Anniyan as one of Anniyan's victims, Chockalingam, an errant catering contractor with the Indian Railways, was his elder brother. In a dramatic publicity stunt, Anniyan admits to the murders when he appears amidst the public and the press. Anniyan explains the rationale behind the murders and adds that only when every Indian is responsible and sincere can the country prosper on par with developed nations. His methods draw both praise and criticism. Prabhakar tries to catch Anniyan, but he escapes.
Upon investigating the phone records and IP address of Anniyan's internet activity, as well as analysing the security footage of Anniyan's appearance, Prabhakar realises that Anniyan is Ambi; Prabhakar then arrests Ambi. The police officers administer a lie detector test and they figure out that Ambi is being honest. Prabhakar, enraged, tells all the officers to leave and Prabhakar brutally tortures Ambi with garuda puranam punishments till he is almost dead. The near-death experience and pain trigger Anniyan's reappearance. Ambi's personality alternates between himself and Anniyan; he brutally subdues Prabhakar as Anniyan while begging for mercy as Ambi. Chari secretly records Prabhakar's torture of Ambi and presents it as evidence of Ambi's mental state during his trial, while Vijaykumar also reveals Ambi's diagnosis. Ambi is acquitted, but is directed to undergo psychotherapy in a mental hospital and will be eligible for release when cured.
When Ambi is released two years later, seemingly cured, his rigid adherence to protocol has diminished and becomes more open and accommodating. He marries Nandini. While travelling on a train during their honeymoon, Ambi notices a man drinking among fellow passengers, who also happened to be the lineworker responsible for Vidya's death when he was caught drinking at work. Moving himself and Nandini away from the man, Ambi secretly throws him off the train to his death but hides the incident from Nandini, revealing that he and Anniyan now maintain a Symbiosis.
With the highest production value among Tamil films of its time, the film was touted to be the director's Masterpiece and was labelled "the most eagerly awaited film of the year" by the media. The film deals with a person having dissociative identity disorder, commonly known as "multiple personality disorder" (MPD) or "split personality syndrome". It was compared to Chandramukhi, released two months before, as it also focused on a character with the same syndrome.
The heroine role of a "devoted Iyengar Brahmin girl" was originally offered to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who was too busy to accommodate production dates. After months of waiting for her call sheet, Shankar eventually offered the role to Sadha. Expressing hope that it would be "an important movie" in her career, Sadha accepted the offer, working on the film for 120 days, adding, "I have a major role to play in Anniyan. There are few heavy portions involving me in the movie that I have given my best." She considered being a part of a Shankar film, especially during the early stages of her career, as a "god's gift" and a "once-in-a-lifetime experience". However, when offered similar roles following the film's success, she refused to be typecast and stated, "I am now looking for roles where my creative potential is tapped. I don't want to be part of such cinema where all one has to do is dance around trees."
Vivek, Prakash Raj, Nedumudi Venu and Nassar appear in supporting roles. Mohan Vaidhya, a carnatic vocalist and occasional actor, plays a minuscule role as Sadha's father Krishna. Malavika Avinash was approached to play Vikram's mother; she rejected the offer, stating, "I am too young to do a screen mom and too old to be a heroine!" Cochin Haneefa, Charle, Kalabhavan Mani, Shanmugarajan and Saurabh Shukla make cameo appearances as delinquent citizens. Haneefa played an indifferent car owner who refuses to help an accident victim as he does not want his "brand new car" to be soiled with blood. Following Haneefa's death in February 2010, Vikram recalled the actor's appearance in the film and said, "Though he'd come only in a few scenes no one could miss him. For roles that have some ambiguity about whether it's a good guy or a bad guy, he is one of the best choices. Until the end, one cannot really guess if he'll end up being good or bad." Comedian and character artiste Charle played an unnamed wastrel and alcoholic who extorts money from his ageing parents for his expenses and is considered by Anniyan to be a liability to society. Charle was instructed by Shankar, "People should see only the character. Only later should they realise that it was Charle."
The role of the younger Ambi was played by child actor Hari Prashanth alias Viraj. When he came to the recording studio to voice his lines, he was accompanied by his father S. N. Surendar, a singer and dubbing artiste. Shankar recognised Surendar and asked him to lend his voice for Nedumudi Venu, as the latter was a Malayali. In the 2004 comedy film Aethirree, which featured Sadha in the female lead, Kanika played the second lead role of a "naughty" Brahmin girl. Shankar, apparently impressed with Kanika's performance in the film, asked her to attend a voice test. When the film-makers preferred Kanika's accent and modulation among the thirty females whose voices were tested, she was selected to dub for Sadha's Brahmin role.
Shankar, who grew up admiring the works of cinematographer P. C. Sreeram in films like Nayakan (1987), Agni Natchathiram (1988), and Idhayathai Thirudathe (1989), desired to collaborate and was in talks with him to handle the photography. While Sreeram was intent on working on Anniyan, he could not accept the offer due to prior commitments. It was initially reported in the media that Sreeram had been recruited; however, Shankar chose V. Manikandan as the director of photography, impressed with his work in Main Hoon Na (2004). Manikandan had earlier collaborated with Shankar when he shot the music video of the song "Secret of Success" in Boys. Manikandan gave six months of bulk dates for the project; but, when the production was troubled by delays, Shankar demanded three more months to complete the film. Manikandan walked out in October 2004, citing scheduling conflicts, and Shankar replaced him with Ravi Varman.
During the casting stage of Boys, the film's cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran was temporarily unavailable and his then-assistant Ravi Varman handled the camera to film Genelia D'Souza's makeup test. Subsequently, Varman nurtured a desire to work with Shankar. Before Shankar commenced work on Anniyan, Varman expressed his desire to work on the film and was hopeful of landing the assignment. He was disappointed when Shankar recruited Manikandan for the project. However, when Manikandan abandoned the project after completing almost half the film, Shankar asked Varman to shoot the remaining portions of the film. Varman had committed to work in Bengali language director Buddhadeb Dasgupta's next film, on which work was scheduled to begin shortly; he dropped out of it to accept Shankar's offer and termed working on Anniyan "a dream come true". The film credits both Manikandan and Ravi Varman as cinematographers in title credits.
In an interview with Gulf News, Vikram spoke of the challenges in portraying all three characters while wearing the same costumes. He said, "I love such challenges. ... Although the costume defined each of the three characters in Anniyan, there were scenes where Ambi would suddenly become Remo and Remo would become Anniyan. There I made it dramatic to bring out each character." He credited his wife Shailaja Balakrishnan, a psychologist, for helping him in fleshing out the character of Ambi, a person who has multiple personality disorder. In a conversation with film critic Baradwaj Rangan, Shailaja recalled the times the film was being made and spoke of Vikram, saying, "I felt we should live in two houses. It's not easy to live with a man who can get that eccentric, an actor who wants to be that difficult on himself. I wouldn't say he becomes the character, but there's definitely some kind of internalisation." Vikram confessed that he had a tough time during the film's making, as playing different characters affected him, and he found himself going mad. He added that he would take a break after a 15-day shoot and watch the pigeons on his terrace as a way of dealing with the pressure.
Vikram grew a tummy to portray Ramanujam while he sported a "macho look" for Anniyan. He also grew his hair long in preparation for his role and rejected other film offers to maintain the continuity in his looks. Together with his character looks and those that he sported in the song sequences, Vikram appears in the film in 18 different getups. Vikram's look in the film was created by make-up artiste Banu. For those parts that show him as metrosexual Remo, he coloured his hair in streaks of copper and blonde. Unwilling to reveal his 'new look' until the film was ready, Vikram avoided the media despite winning the aforementioned National Award for the year 2003. Meanwhile, Sadha's make-up and hair styling were done by Mumbai-based celebrity stylist Ojas M. Rajani.
The film features a scene at the Thiruvaiyaru Thyagaraja Utsavam. The Utsavam is a week-long music festival which commemorates the 18th-century saint-composer Tyagaraja, revered as one of the greatest composers of carnatic music, and is held annually at his resting place in Thiruvaiyaru, Thanjavur. With the use of sets, the art department recreated the Tyagaraja Aradhana near Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu. For filming the scene, the crew recreated a performance of the famous kriti "Jagadānanda kārakā", the first of the five Pancharatna Kriti compositions of Tyagaraja, as performed during Tyagaraja Aradhana. The aradhana, held on the fifth day of the festival, witnesses experts of carnatic music from across the world converging at his samaadhi, where they sing his pancharatna kritis in unison as an homage to the saint.
Shankar approached violin maestro Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan, a regular participant at the actual event, to conceive and orchestrate the sequence. Vaidyanathan was serving as the secretary of Sri Thyagabrahma Mahotsava Sabha, the committee which organises the aradhana. The scene features him in a cameo and was shot in June 2004 at a studio in Chennai. Realistic sets were erected to resemble the actual venue and leading carnatic vocalists Sudha Ragunathan, Sirkazhi G. Sivachidambaram, O. S. Arun, P. Unni Krishnan and instrumentalists such as violinist A. Kanyakumari and mridangam expert Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman were recruited to add a touch of authenticity. The two-minute scene was brought to life in "painstaking detail". The sequence was much talked about and well appreciated.
In a fight sequence, Anniyan encounters about a hundred martial artists inside the fictional International Martial Arts School, Vodao. About a dozen stuntmen crashed down from the balcony, injuring themselves badly after the rope which they were tied to gave in. The action sequence was shot using 120 cameras for employing the time slice photography technique, a visual effect known as "bullet time" and popularised by the American film The Matrix (1999), to achieve the frozen-time effect. Shankar had earlier toyed with the idea of time-slice and tried it while filming the song "Ale Ale" in his Boys. While the time-freeze sequence in Boys was achieved by the linking of 60–62 cameras to attain a 180° rotation, Anniyan employed 120–122 cameras for a 270° rotation.
The scene where Anniyan addresses a huge gathering was shot in a stadium in Hyderabad. As he speaks to the audience, the lights turn on and off in the background. Speaking on how the sequence was filmed, Ravi Varman said that they decided not to light up the entire stadium as they felt it would have looked flat. As the sequence was important to the film, he juxtaposed the stadium with light and shadow so that it would look different. During the pre-climax scene, when Ambi is held in custody and enquired by Prabhakar, Ambi's persona keeps switching between the characters Ambi and Anniyan. Vikram claims to have completed the sequence in a single take.
For the scene where Remo courtship Nandini, a chemical tube brought from Malaysia was used to measure how attractive a person is.
The song features the lead pair singing amidst a flower farm as mridangam and flute players accompany them in the background. As part of their roles, the male supporting actors who appear in the song were required to wear a dhoti and towel, leaving most of their body exposed to the freezing cold. The shoot began as early as 5:30 AM and the locals, who thought they should be out of their mind to be dressed so, came up to them and warned that they might freeze to death.
"Iyengaru Veetu", a semi-classical song, begins with a prelude of the Pancharatna Kriti "Jagadānanda kārakā". The actual song, which follows later, was picturised on a set erected at AVM Studios made to look like an old traditional Iyengar home in Thanjavur. The song was shot extravagantly, with the lead pair and the dozens of support dancers sporting rich, colourful costumes.
In December 2004, a ten-day shoot was held in Mumbai for the item number "Kadhal Yaanai" featuring Vikram alongside a top model, whose identity was initially undisclosed to generate curiosity. It was later revealed to be Czechs-based model Yana Gupta. Filmed by Ravi Varman and choreographed by Ahmed Khan, the song was filmed like a fashion show where Vikram and Yana Gupta wear fashionable clothes and sashay along a ramp. The song was filmed on a set erected in a studio to resemble a famous night-spot in London.
The track "Kannum Kannum Nokia", a peppy and trendy love duet choreographed by Raju Sundaram, was picturised on the lead pair and had them wearing costumes made entirely of . The song was picturised in Malaysia at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Petronas Towers. The song, filmed during the night, was reportedly the first song to be shot at the airport. Ravi Varman revealed in an interview that the song was shot like a commercial. The song was also filmed at the Nokia Headquarters in Espoo, Finland.
The folk song "Andangkaaka" was shot in a village near Sengottai. For filming the song, a huge set was erected to resemble a village. The sets were visualised and created by Sabu Cyril, the film's art director. Shankar adopted a village near Tenkasi and Sabu Cyril painted all the houses, roads, rocks, and even a bridge in varied colours. They then hired hundreds of lorries and old model ambassador cars and painted faces on them. The faces of actors were painted on rock mountains. The lead pair were joined by hundreds of dancers and the total cost of the song worked out to 1 crore. In all, 350 houses were painted.
VCL also did the CGI for a "cosmic zoom" scene, where the camera zooms from beyond the clouds to the streets of Chennai city, which no real camera can achieve. Aerial views and paintings of the city were stitched together along with computer generated images (CGI) of clouds to create the long, one-piece camera zoom. Animator and special effects designer L. I. Kannan, who would later turn director with the long-delayed period film Karikalan with Vikram in the lead, also worked on the special effects. Meanwhile, the special effects for the time-slice sequence were rendered by Big Freeze in London.
The scene where Anniyan addresses a packed audience in Nehru Stadium was filmed with the space empty. The crowd was created through visual effects using crowd multiplication methods. The VFX for the sequence was done under the supervision of visual effects consultant Zameer Hussain of Land Marvel Animation Studios, Chennai. The scene, in which hundreds of buffaloes chase down a delinquent car owner into an abandoned sand quarry and trample him to death, was accomplished through CGI using just one buffalo. The CG work was supplied by Jayakumar and V. Srinivas Mohan of the Chennai-based firm, Indian Artists Computer Graphics. Srinivas and his team had earlier worked with Shankar in Boys. Speaking of the sequence, Srinivas quipped, "The animals are lethargic and listless in their movements. Nothing can make them agile."
In an interview with The Hindu, Shankar elaborated on the message he conveys through the film:
Following the release of the trailer on 7 May 2005, the film was believed to be inspired by the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novel, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Upon the film's release, The Hindu drew parallels between it and the 1998 novel Tell Me Your Dreams by Sidney Sheldon. Shankar denied that the film was inspired by Tell Me Your Dreams, claiming that he knew of the novel only after completing the script. Sify compared the character of Ambi to the protagonist of The Mask (1994), a film about a "mild mannered guy changing into a one-man army, craving to see natural justice realised".
The methods of punishment meted out to the sinners by Anniyan in the film is based on Garuda Purana, a Vaishnavite Puranas which speaks of life after death and punishments for wrongdoers.
The film was dubbed into other South Indian languages and was released simultaneously in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala. The film was also released in key overseas countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Malaysia, and Singapore. The film was released with 404 prints in Tamil and Telugu alone. Later, the film was dubbed into French by Paramount Pictures. Reportedly, Anniyan is the first Indian film to be dubbed into French and released in French-speaking countries worldwide by Columbia Tristar. The film was further dubbed and released in Hindi as Aparichit: The Stranger on 19 May 2006. At a private screening held a day before its Hindi theatrical release, the film received a "warm reception". Aparachitudu was rereleased on 17 May 2024 in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Visual Dasan of Kalki wrote that both the art director Sabu Cyril and composer Harris Jayaraj lent their hand to Shankar's grand visions, adding that everyone could bow down to Shankar's social responsibility of exaggerating colorful entertainment and sensitising the fan by watching Anniyan once, while simultaneously appreciating Vikram for his performance in three different characters. In addition, he said that Anniyan's transformation reminded him of Jim Carrey from The Mask. Dasan also appreciated Shankar for perfectly using other actors wherever necessary. Labelling the film as a "must see", a reviewer at Sify acclaimed the film, saying it holds the viewers riveted with its racy narration, a relevant message backed with technical wizardry, never-seen before colourful song picturisation and particularly the performance of Vikram. Yet, the reviewer also criticised the film, saying it was too lengthy and the story too thin on logic.
Reviewing Aparichithudu, the Telugu version of the film, The Hindu said that it was watchable. Regarding the Hindi version of the film, Raja Sen of Rediff.com derided the pathetic dubbing, saying that it was refreshing and watchable, despite boasting of enough masala to make the viewers sneeze. He concluded his review by saying, "Overall, Aparichit is a slickly made, well-paced actioner that works quite well, despite the dub. The film is engaging and crisply scripted, and the action is never too excessive, lightened by jokes and general tomfoolery that never offensively interrupts the actual plot." Nitin V Nambiar of The Times of India criticised the "poor recording" and "strictly average" dubbing, noting that Shankar's direction chooses "palatability over plausibility".
The film received numerous awards and nominations. The film won National Award in the Special Effects category. Anniyan became the fourth film directed by Shankar to receive that award; the other three are Kaadhalan (1994), Indian (1996), and Jeans (1998). It also won eight out of the total 15 awards awarded by Filmfare for the best of Tamil cinema.
| National Film Awards | 53rd National Film Awards | Best Special Effects | Tata Elxsi | ||
| Filmfare Awards South | 53rd Filmfare Awards South | Best Film | Anniyan | ||
| Best Actor | Vikram | ||||
| Best Actress | Sadha | ||||
| Best Director | Shankar | ||||
| Best Lyricist | Vairamuthu | ||||
| Best Art Director | Sabu Cyril | ||||
| Best Music Director | Harris Jayaraj | ||||
| Best Action Director | Peter Hein | ||||
| Best Cinematographer | Ravi Varman, V. Manikandan | ||||
| Tamil Nadu State Film Awards | Tamil Nadu State Film Award – 2005 | Best Film | Anniyan | (Second Best) | |
| Best Villain | Prakash Raj | ||||
| Best Director | Shankar | ||||
| Best Comedian | Vivek | ||||
| Best Music Director | Harris Jayaraj | (also for Ghajini) | |||
| Best Male Dubbing Artist | S. N. Surendar |
Anniyan was the first Tamil film and the first in South India to get institutional finance. For its institutional finance, it procured a sum of 9.5 crore from IDBI Bank. Anniyan was insured by United India Insurance for 15 crore, thereby making it the first South Indian film to be insured and also the largest insurance cover extended to a South Indian film at that time.
The rights for Aparichithudu, the Telugu-dubbed version, was bought by a producer for an all-time record price. Meanwhile, the film was sold in Kerala for 1.3 crore, which was again a record for a Tamil film there. The US rights were bought by the distribution house Bharat Creations. With the theatrical rights and pre-release booking, the trade circuit predicted that the film would recover its cost within ten days of its release.
A week after release, the film grossed more than 1 crore in Chennai, 27 lakh in Sathyam Cinemas, 71 lakh from 10 prints in Salem, and netted 41 lakh in Coimbatore which were all box office records. And beyond Tamil Nadu, the film earned the distributors 1.27 crore from Nizam in Andhra, 50 lakh in Karnataka, and 10 lakh from 3 screens in Mumbai. The trade pundits estimated that V. Ravichandran would get a distributor's share of 8–10 crore in its first week from cinemas across Tamil Nadu. A week after its release, the Telugu-dubbed version Aparichithudu was declared a hit in Andhra Pradesh. Distributor Karunakara Reddy of Megha Films in Hyderabad quipped, " Aparichitudu has taken an opening just like a Telugu superstar film and should collect a distributor's share of Rs. 5–7 crore for the Nizam area alone." In Kerala, Anniyan released in 35 screens across the state, receiving a "record opening" for a Tamil film and became the first Tamil film to get a distributors' share of 62 lakh in its first week. A fortnight after its release, the film was labelled a "super hit" in Tamil cinema's half-yearly report compiled by film trade analyst for The Hindu Sreedhar Pillai.
In an exactly six-week theatrical run, Anniyan netted 1.05 crore with a distributor's share of around 52 lakh. It was an "all India record for collections, the highest share in least number of days from any theatre in India." However, in Tamil Nadu, collections began dropping five weeks after its release and it was estimated that the film would earn a share of 16 crore. In September 2005, the film's gross earnings surpassed the 2 million milestone. At the completion of a 50-day run at Sathyam Cinemas, Anniyan "recorded the highest 50 days collection for a Tamil film from a single screen in the world" earning 1.12 crore.
Anniyan was declared a blockbuster at the close of the year and, together with Chandramukhi, earned an estimated gross of 110 crore worldwide. The film also collected a distributor's share of 2 crore. In Andhra Pradesh, Aparichitudu was named the biggest hit of 2005. The film did better business than straight Telugu films. It was the highest grosser among all Telugu films released that year. It also prompted producers in the Telugu cinema, which had hit a rough patch following a spate of box-office failures, to acquire the dubbing rights to Vikram's previous Tamil films and release them in Telugu.
In Kerala, the film ran for more than 150 days and grossed over 6 crore; it became the highest grossing Tamil film in Kerala at that time. In Karnataka, too, the film was a success although the exact box-office figures are not known. However, the film's Hindi version Aparichit opened to poor reception, earning only 2.1 crore across 150 screens and was declared a flop by Box Office India. While acknowledging that the film underperformed at the box-office, Vikram stated that it nevertheless made an impact. He further added that the film got him recognition from people in the remote corners of India as the drama and the action sequences greatly appealed to them. By the end of its theatrical run, the film had grossed 57 crore in its lifetime.
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The characters played by Vikram were spoofed by Vadivelu in the Tamil film Aaru (2005); the comedy sequence also features four songs from the film's soundtrack album. Aparichitudu, the film's Telugu version, was parodied by comedian Venu Madhav in the Telugu films Chatrapati (2005) and Seenugadu Chiranjeevi Fan (2005). It was also parodied, along with Chandramukhi, in the film Rajababu (2006). Vikram's character of Anniyan was parodied in the Kannada film 7 O' Clock (2006). In the 2010 film Tamizh Padam, a full-length parody film on stereotypical characters and clichéd sequences in Tamil cinema, the lead actor Shiva recreates the "Anthakoopam" punishment sequence to comic effect, where he tries to force a herd of buffaloes into stampeding a villain but fails in his attempt. Later, the comedy sequence was re-enacted by Allari Naresh in Sudigadu (2012), an official remake of Tamizh Padam. In the 2012 Kannada film Yaare Koogadali, a remake of the Tamil film Poraali (2011), the long and unkempt hair sported by Puneeth Rajkumar was reportedly inspired by the look of Anniyan. The character Remo inspired Sivakarthikeyan's film to have a title of the same name. Actor TSK mimics Vikram's split personality in the film Petromax (2019).
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