Men in Black/Trivia


 * 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, 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 ?!
 * 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, 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!
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: L in the first three seasons was played by Jennifer "Kes" Lien.
 * K in the last three seasons was also Grimlock and Cornfed.
 * Frank the Pug was played by Eddie Barth, better known to audiences as Detective Bowman.
 * Season 2 saw the addition of Gregg Berger as the voice of Agent K, voice of Orson Pig.
 * The villain Quintoon was played by René Auberjonois, better known as Odo.
 * Kay's alien love interest Aileen is Aunt Zelda.
 * Alpha is Ra's Al Ghul, The Lobe and Nergal, among others.
 * Zed is Duke Phillips and the Sheriff from Squidbillies, but only on The Animated Series.
 * Buzzard is Blight.
 * Suspiciously Similar Song: The theme for the cartoon series carries the first few beats of Will Smith's eponymous "Men In Black" as part of its main theme, but ditches the rest of the song in favor of a instrumental hip-hop composition.
 * 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.