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Think You Know Everything About the MIB Franchise? Think Again

Fun Facts About Men in Black

Think You Know Everything About the MIB Franchise? Think Again

Fun Facts About Men in Black
Image Source: Everett Collection

Men in Black is back, and though the fourth installment in the franchise will be a definite departure from the original trilogy, we can't wait to get back into the MIB universe once again. Rather than the original alien-fighting agent duo of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black: International reunites Thor: Ragnarok costars Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as Agent H and Agent M, respectively, with Hemsworth playing a top agent in MIB's UK branch and Thompson playing a new MIB recruit assigned to the branch. In honor of this long-awaited flick, we present to you a few facts about the MIB franchise that we bet you've never heard before.

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Little-Known Facts About Casting

Little-Known Facts About Casting
Image Source: Everett Collection
  1. Director Barry Sonnenfeld originally didn't want to cast Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K due to the actor's reputation for being a bit difficult to work with. Sonnenfeld once confessed that after seeing Jones give an interview, he told his wife, "Thank God, as long as I live I will never, ever have to work with that jerk." Funnily enough, the two ended up working very well together.
  2. Before Jones, Western icon Clint Eastwood was reportedly offered the part of Agent K, though he turned it down.
  3. Chris O'Donnell was executive producer Steven Spielberg's top choice to play Agent J, but Sonnenfeld eventually persuaded him that Will Smith would be a better fit for the role (and questionably dissuaded O'Donnell from accepting).
  4. Friends alum David Schwimmer also turned down the role of Agent J due to a film he was directing at the time with the cast of his Chicago theater company.
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Fun Cockroach Tidbits

Fun Cockroach Tidbits
Image Source: Everett Collection
  1. Coen Brothers alum John Turturro and Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell were both given the chance to play Edgar the Bug, a giant cockroach alien in disguise and the main antagonist of the first film, but both actors declined and the role eventually went to Vincent D'Onofrio.
  2. In order to get Edgar's stilted shuffle just right, D'Onofrio purchased two basketball knee braces from a sporting goods store and practiced moving with his legs stuck in a slight bend and feet and ankles taped so that his ankles couldn't rotate.
  3. An animatronic version of Edgar the Bug was created for the final scenes of the original film, but the producers opted to use a computer generated bug instead, an investment that took up $4.5 million of the film's budget.
  4. According to the Humane Society, no cockroaches were harmed in the making of the films. The yellow goo that can be seen when Agent J stomps on the bugs was actually created using packets of mustard, and the cockroaches were all accounted for at the end of every day on set.
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Creepy Real-Life Influences

Creepy Real-Life Influences
Image Source: Everett Collection
  1. MIB is an abbreviation first used in late ufologist John A. Keel's The Mothman Prophecies, a 1975 book-turned-film offering Keel's accounts of the large, winged creature called the Mothman that Keel allegedly spotted in West Virginia between 1966 and 1967.
  2. Others credit They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers author (and close friend of Keel) Gray Barker for introducing the notion of the Men in Black to UFO folklore. His own book about the Mothman, The Silver Bridge, preceded Keel's book by five years.
  3. Men in Black comic book creator Lowell Cunningham has said that he truly believes in the notion of men in black, whose job it is to keep people from discovering the truth about extraterrestrial life.
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