Trivia
- Chris O'Donnell was first offered the role of J.
- David Schwimmer was asked to play the role of J before Will Smith, but turned it down.
- Clint Eastwood was offered the role of K but turned it down.
- Quentin Tarantino was originally offered the chance to direct, but turned it down.
- The "known aliens" visible on the screen include Al Roker, Isaac Mizrahi, Danny DeVito, director Barry Sonnenfeld, Chloe Sonnenfeld (Barry's daughter), Sylvester Stallone, Dionne Warwick, Newt Gingrich, Anthony Robbins, George Lucas, and executive producer Steven Spielberg.
- The joke told by K at the restaurant that ends in the ambiguous punchline, "...yeah, but this one's eatin' my popcorn!" is the same strange joke told by the stand-up comic at the burlesque show in The Sting (1973).
- Director Barry Sonnenfeld replaced Les Mayfield shortly before production began.
- John Turturro was offered the role of Edgar, but had to decline due to other commitments.
- After Linda Fiorentino "won" her role in Men in Black in a poker game with director Barry Sonnenfeld, he warned her that she would not be in any nude scenes.
- In the scene where K takes J through the arrivals and customs area, there is an alien father and son. The actress who played the father is Debbie Lee Carrington, who went on to play Mini Mimi on "The Drew Carey Show" (1995), while the son was played by Verne Troyer, who went on to play Mini Me in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).
- After both agents shoot down the alien ship near the end of the film, K arrests the alien, citing his violation of the "Tycho Treaty". Tycho was the crater on the Moon (named after 16th century Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe (who had a false nose made of a copper alloy, incidentally)) where the monolith was found in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
- When J accidentally throws the "ball" in the MIB office, the ball briefly flies past the green alien "Wak" from the Joe Dante movie Explorers (1985). Explorers featured an almost identical scene with a flying sphere that goes out of control and smashes through things.
- Will Smith, after reading the script, did not want to accept the role. It was his wife Jada Pinkett Smith that convinced him to take the part.
- When Jeebs grows a new head, his crossed eye switches sides.
- The housewife being named "Beatrice" is a reference to the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel "The Sirens of Titan," first published in 1959.
- When K reveals there are about 1500 aliens on Earth and most of them are on Manhattan just trying to make a living, James asks "Cab drivers?". In "So long and thanks for all the fish" (part of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series), Ford Prefect submits an entry to the Guide hinting that driving a cab is a good way to make a living for aliens visiting New York.
- According to the computer when his identity is being erased, Will Smith's character James D. Edwards III had the social security number 905-80-5406.
- Visual references made to the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- During the opening credits, the dragonfly flies over the moon a la Elliot
- Laurel Weaver is dropped into the pine tree as the Bug attempts escape, there is a shot of the alien ships lights as seen through the pine boughs. Similar shot to the shot of the alien ship landing at the end of ET.
- A further reference to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the final sequence, where our universe is revealed to exist in a gaming marble. Ford Prefect told Arthur Dent he knew of a planet that got used in a game of inter-galactic bar billiards and was potted into a black hole ("only scored 30 points, too").
- Producer Steven Speilberg hired Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) collaborator David Koepp to do an uncredited rewrite.
- Through an apparent lab error, at least portions of the release prints used in the U.S. were not hard matted for spherical widescreen projection. This meant that if the projectionist did not properly frame the projected image, the audience would be able to see lens shades, microphones and other things not normally visible in the frame area.
- The Stadium the ship flies over during the baseball games is Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens NY. The player that gets hit on the head with the fly ball is then NY Mets outfielder Bernard Gilkey.
- The examination room of the MIB headquarters was modeled on the TWA terminal at JFK International Airport (note the Arne Jacobsen Egg chairs).
- The film's climax takes place on the site in Flushing Meadows, New York, where the 1964 World's Fair was held.
- The MIB headquarters are located in the ventilation tower of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which connects Manhattan with Brooklyn.
- To make them into credible flying saucers, the CG renditions of the towers at Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, where the finale takes place, are substantially different from the actual buildings. Primarily, there are actually three structures of varying height, not two as shown in the film. Additionally, the saucer dish of the shortest tower intersects with the poles of the taller ones, and the dish of the mid-sized tower intersects with the pole of the largest one. Therefore, there is really only one complete saucer - on top of the tallest building. Moreover, the dish atop the highest tower is double the thickness of the shorter tower, not equal as depicted in the film.
- The line Will Smith says after jumping on the double-decker bus, "It just be raining black people in New York", was improvised on the set, but the producers like it so much that they kept it.
- When Kay tells EdgarBug that he is in violation of section 4153 of the Tycho Treaty, this is a reference to director Barry Sonnenfeld's birthday, 1 April 1953.
- Yasushi Nirasawa worked on some designs for the Edgar Bug which ultimately went unused. One of his takes on the Edgar Bug was a creature more humanoid in form, with two heads and very long arms which resembled the forelegs of a praying mantis.
- Originally there were going to be two huge alien spaceships looming over Earth: an Arquillian ship and a Baltian ship, with representatives of both species staking claim of the galaxy. Mr. Rosenberg (the "little dude in the big dude's head") was a Baltian (confirmed by the novelization of the film), while the tall alien (played by Carel Struycken) he met at the restaurant was an Arquillian (and is so listed in the end credits). After some choice editing and rewriting, Rosenberg became an Arquillian.
credit: imdb
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