Men in Black (film)/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • 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.
  • 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 "It be raining black people in New York" line after he jumps onto the bus was ad-libbed.
    • In fact, a lot of the lines in the original film were this. Tommy Lee Jones was famously dissatisfied with the script and so he took it upon himself to "fix" it by ad-libbing a good deal of his dialogue and one-liners, The result was Will Smith, not to be outdone, having to play along too. 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.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • 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.
    • Originally, Clint Eastwood was approached to play Agent K.
    • 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.
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