The Fifth Element/Trivia

• Actor Allusion: When Cornelius apologizes to Korben for mugging him, he calls him "Mr. Willis".
• The Cameo: The mugger waiting at Korben's door is none other than Gothika 's and La Haine 's french filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz.
  • Zorg's hapless assistant Right Arm (who operates the cockroach bug and impersonates Korben at the spaceport) is UK trip-hop artist Tricky.
    • To be fair, Tricky's appearance is more like Hey, It's That Guy! than The Cameo, especially given he lasted half the movie.
  • The Mangalores' human disguises (and a lot of extras) are played by fashion models who worked with costume designer Jean-Paul Gaultier.
  • Fog, the nervous stammering bellboy, is played by British stand-up comedian/occasional actor Lee Evans.
• Cast the Expert: Milla Jovovich is fluent in four languages, and so had little trouble learning the alien language written by Luc Besson. They were apparently able to have fluent conversations in the language by the end of filming.
• Casting Gag: The man waiting impatiently at McDonald's is played by Mac McDonald.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Milla Jovovich's hair was to be dyed from its natural brown color to her character's signature orange color. However, due to the fact that her hair had to be re-dyed regularly to maintain the bright color, Milla's hair quickly became too damaged and broken to withstand the dye. Eventually, a wig was created to match the color and style of Leeloo's hair, and was used for the remainder of the production.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The wonder on Bruce Willis' face when the diva sings is real. That was the first time he'd heard it.
  • When Korben first meets Leeloo and she starts talking to him in her language, Luc Besson didn't tell Bruce Willis what Milla Jovovich was going to say to him, so Bruce's reactions are real.
• Fake American:
  • British actor Gary Oldman plays Zorg, a character who speaks with an extremely exaggerated southern US twang (illustrated by the line "Leave them one crate. For the cause." which is so heavily accented it comes out sounding like "For the course").
  • Also counts for Christopher Fairbank playing Professor Mactilburgh in an early scene. He's generally more well known as Moxey, a Scouser, in British comedy-drama Auf Wiedersehen Pet.
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Nino wants da cash.
  • Bilbo Baggins is Priest Vito Cornelius.
  • General Munro wanted Korben to go to Phloston Paradise with Rosika Miklos, but Korben wasn't interested.
    • General Munro used to be a replicant.
  • Hey, that Mangalore dude at the airport is also an Auror!
  • Leeloo got her ass kicking skills from Alice.
  • Ruby Rhod used to be a detective.
  • Captain Hollister makes a short appearance as a cop.
• Non-Singing Voice: Opera singer Inva Mula dubs the Diva's singing voice, while Maïwenn Le Besco portrays her. Reportedly, Mula told the composer that the notes written for her were impossible because the human voice cannot transition that way. The solution was for her to sing all the notes in isolation and then splice them together digitally.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Gary Oldman, sporting a slicked-down partial Mohawk, a beard like a misplaced Hitler mustache, a southern accent and giving one of the most low-key but still awesome performances of his career.
  • Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr as the President, playing a more prominent and powerful role than his typical Scary Black Man parts.
  • Brion James playing something besides a low-life criminal scum.
• Shout-Out: Korben Dallas' unusual first name has to be a reference to Heavy Metal artist Richard Corben, given the many other references to European science-fiction comic books found in the film.
  • In a case that also crosses over with Meaningful Name, the Diva is named Plavalaguna. "Plava Laguna" is a Serbo-Croatian phrase meaning "blue lagoon". This has a double dose of shout-out -- first, "blue lagoon" refers to Milla Jovovich's first film Return to the Blue Lagoon, but it's also the name of a tourist group based in Poreč in Istria, Croatia, which is a favorite holiday spot for director Luc Besson.
• Star-Making Role: Milla Jovovich, in her first lead after Return to The Blue Lagoon.
• Throw It In: Korben's line "Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English" was an ad-lib by Bruce Willis.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Alert film buffs will note that Korben and Zorg never meet each other face to face. In an original draft of the script, Zorg would have faced Korben during the hotel evacuation, where the latter beat the crap out of the former for firing him and attacking Leeloo before stealing his ship (the ZF-1 was out of ammo). Zorg then survives the destruction of the hotel with the personal shield of the ZF-1, only to land in a massive glacier. He then calls his secretary to send another ship, only for the battery in his ZF-1 phone to fail. That ending is featured in the novelization.
  • All the societal elites that Ruby points out at the opera were originally going to have more to do during the shootout at the hotel.
• The Wiki Rule: The Fifth Element Wiki.