Men in Black (film)/Trivia

• Actor Allusion/Casting Gag: Agent J gets decked by an alien, parodying Will Smith punching an alien in Independence Day.
• Casting Gag: The posters play on the fact that the film's two main stars had the last names "Smith" and "Jones"... you know, the kind of super-plain code-names you'd expect two anonymous, black-suited government agents to use.
• Enforced Method Acting: Tommy Lee Jones was not amused by the script he was given, so he ad-libbed a good deal of his dialogue. Look closely enough and you can see Will Smith trying to keep up, as expected of the fresh recruit. The resulting synergy is well over half the movie's charm.
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Patrick Warburton, also known as Joe Swanson (or David Puddy or Brock Samson) appears near the start of the second film as J's partner. Sonnenfeld intended Warburton as the man who became The Tick (animation), and said agent was called T.
  • The "Edgar-Bug" from the first movie is Gomer Pyle/Detective Goren, and Jeebs is Monk.
  • Lurch is an alien?!
  • Newton is Tobias Fünke.
  • Gail is The Light Of Zartha?!
  • When K was younger, he was Jonah Hex. Kinda explains a lot.
    • So Tom Bell and Llewellyn Moss are the same person? An interesting twist.
  • Zed is Patches O'Houlihan but only in the movies.
  • GOB is Agent Double A, J's partner in the alternate timeline in the third movie.
  • Professor Trelawney replaced Z at the head of the MIB.
    • Who better than Nanny McPhee to keep all those people in line?
  • Boris the Animal is Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.
  • The MIB chief in '69 is Sledge Hammer!!
• Recycled: the Series
• Science Marches On: A minor one. When J heads to the morgue to retrieve a cat, he hilariously tries to convince Lauren that the cat is a witness in a murder investigation. Fast forward about ten years and advancements in forensic science mean that animals who 'witness' a murder can be checked for any forensic evidence the killer may have left behind.
• Similarly Named Works: There is another Men In Black, which was a 1935 Three Stooges short that was nominated for an Oscar.
• Technology Marches On: K shows J a small alien disc and says "They're going to replace CDs soon". At this point, it's doubtful. It was based on Sony's MiniDisc, which did indeed fail to be the wave of the future. Also, J's introduction is him chasing down an alien on foot to arrest him. These days, the fleeing suspect probably would have been tazed, ending the chase rather quickly.
• Throw It In:
  • The scene where the alien that Kay killed in the beginning of the film transformed was not originally planned. The creators added it in because they realized that most people would have sympathized with the alien had he died as is, and wanted to ensure no sympathy was to be gained for the alien prior to being killed.
  • Will Smith's line "It just be rainin' black people in New York!" was improvised but so hilarious that they decided to leave it in.
  • As was his line in the sequel when showing Kay the car: "It used to come with a black man, but it kept getting pulled over". Apparently they reused it so much that he soon became sick of it.
  • In fact, most of the lines in the final product were this. Tommy Lee Jones didn't like the script and made up most of his dialogue on the spot, with Will Smith trying to keep up. It was hilarious enough that Barry Sonnenfeld just didn't care and threw it ALL in. And the movie ended up being praised for its witty dialogue, in case you needed more proof how awesome Tommy Lee Jones is.
  • In MIB II, rapper Biz Markie was visiting Will Smith on the set and they were beatboxing to each other. Sonnenfeld saw this, loved it, put Markie in as an alien in the post office scene, and added the part where J speaks to him in his native language (which was really just their beatbox routine).
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to the book The Man Behind the Mask, Michael Jackson would have appeared in the sequel for free...if Will Smith were dropped from the film so he could be the protagonist. He couldn't convince Sony's higher-ups that this was a good idea, hence the cameo instead.
  • Bruce Campbell was the one originally in mind to play the exterminator, but he turned it down to appear in some TV movie that even some of his more hardcore fans haven't heard of.
  • Clint Eastwood was originally offered the part of Kay, but declined.
  • Among the options for the role of Jay was David Schwimmer of Friends fame. Imagine a Men in Black starring Clint Eastwood and David Schwimmer.
  • Chris O'Donnell was the original choice for Jay. He does get another shot at being an agent, though.
  • The sequel would've used the World Trade Center in some way, but then 9/11 happened.
  • Originally, there were going to be two alien ships looming over the Earth, demanding the return of the galaxy: the Arquillian ship, and a Baltian ship (Rosenberg was originally a Baltian in the script). The initial volley is compared to two gunslingers using a giant rock as cover. Some work was done in post production (dubbing the aliens' conversation into "alienspeak", for one), and long story short, Rosenberg became an Arquillian.