The Expendables (franchise)/Trivia

• Bilingual Bonus: the Somali in the film is legitimate, hilarious Somali.
• Classically-Trained Extra: Not in the usual sense. General Garza's two bodyguards, who look mind-boggingly similar to one another? Twin MMA fighters Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, who currently compete in the UFC alongside Randy Couture. Sadly, they're not seen in any hand-to-hand combat.
• Dueling Movies: Was released around the same time as the film versions of the The a Team, The Losers, and RED (film), as all four are very similar on the surface. Machete also covers similar ground.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Cordelia Chase is Lee's girlfriend.
  • Dexter's pal Angel Batista is General Garza.
  • B Movie action fans (and there were probably a few in the audience) will recognize Gary Daniels as The Brit. Some may even recognize him as Kenshiro from the live action adaptation of Fist of the North Star.
  • Looks like Sal Maroni was kicked out of Gotham City and set up shop in a Banana Republic.
  • Oh, for crying out loud. This trope is the entire reason this movie exists!
• Hey, It's That Voice!: If you think the original version was good in the All-Star Cast department, the Japanese dubbed version is the reunion of many of the biggest Hot-Blooded Badasses in anime history:
  • Ross is Joe The Condor
  • Ying Yang is Hiko Seijuro and Char Aznable
  • Jensen is Solid Snake, Anavele Gato and Seth
  • Lee is Cid Highwind and Kei Karasuma
  • General Garza is Ikki Yoneda
  • Tool is Shinomori Aoshi
  • Lacy is Motoko Kusanagi and Claudette
  • Monroe is Yazan Gable and Jiraiya
  • Paine is Ibiki Morino
  • Mr. Church is the other Seth (and also counts as Hilarious in Hindsight)
  • Trench is Takeda Shingen, The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, Umibozu and Sergei Dragunov.
  • Too bad neither Norio Wakamoto, nor Akira Kamiya, Tohru Furuya or Nobuyuki Hiyama worked in the dub in this movie, because the movie will be more awesome with them in the dub along with the original actors.
• Playing Against Type: Many Dexter fans were surprised to see Angel Batista, one of the most consistently friendly, even-tempered, decent characters from that show, as a military dictator exploiting his island to fuel the drug trade.
• Shout-Out: The whole church scene.
  • "What've we got? Four and a half men?"
  • Christmas acquiring a ruby from Burma. Alfred relates a similar tale, and closer to home Burma was the setting of the most recent Rambo film, starring...you know.
• Similarly Named Works: Not to be confused with a 1989 Vietnam movie with the same name.
• Throw It In: Bruce Willis ad-libbed his jab at both Arnold and Sylvester about going down on each other; Stallone was initially disgusted, as revealed in commentary, but the line set the scene so well that it was kept.
• What Could Have Been: As mentioned in the description Seagal and Van Damme were offered roles but they turned them down due to problems with the producer and a dislike of his character, respectively. Also, Terry Crews' role was written with Wesley Snipes in mind. The role was almost filled by Forest Whitaker, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Kurt Russell and 50 Cent were offered parts but declined, and there are rumors that Chuck Norris was approached as well. IMDb claims Danny Trejo, Denis Leary and Alan "Wash" Tudyk were approached for certain roles that were written out when they had scheduling conflicts. Stallone wanted all of them if he could so we aren't sure if he wanted the universe to explode.
  • That would have been one hell of a Dying Moment of Awesome though.
  • There are also rumors that Bruce Campbell had been approached.

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