Line #7 Trivia/BloodDiamond


1	* ActorInspiredElement: During Maddy and Archer's talk about his past, he rebuffs briefly by saying, "you Americans sure like to talk about your feelings, huh?" According to the director commentary, Leo added that line, but took it word-for-word from what a South African man said to him while he was doing research for the role.
2	* AwardCategoryFraud: Creator/DjimonHounsou was nominated for Best Supporting Actor while Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio was nominated as Lead, despite the fact that the entire story revolves around the former's quest to rescue his son (and Hounsou has much more screen time).
3	* AwesomeDearBoy: Well not so much 'awesome' as 'important'. Djimon Honsou was keen to do a film that would highlight many of the issues going on Africa. He said he would have done the film for free.
4	* CaliforniaDoubling: Most of the film was shot in South Africa and Mozambique. This can be seen by the fact that most of the vehicles in the movie are right-hand drive; Sierra Leone drives on the right.
5	* TheCastShowOff: Arnold Vosloo's first language is Afrikaans, and he speaks lines in both that and English.
6	* DoingItForTheArt: Edward Zwick wasn't sure about doing the movie at first, but was told that a lot of people in the war-torn countries couldn't forgive deprogrammed child soldiers for what they did, because they didn't know what their brainwashing involved. He said that doing the movie would be worth it if they could show what the process was like.
7	* FakeNationality:
8	** Danny Archer is a white Rhodesian played by American Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio.
9	** Creator/DjimonHounsou is of both Beninese and American nationality and plays a Sierra Leonean fisherman.
10	** Captain Poison is played by British-Barbadian actor Creator/DavidHarewood.
11	* FollowTheLeader: This was one of a couple of films about modern conflict in Africa released after the success of ''Film/BlackHawkDown''.
12	* OneTakeWonder: The scene in the prison where Solomon strips off and screams "Where is the diamond?!" was done perfectly on the first take. Doubly impressive, as Djimon Honsou recalls not being sure how the scene would be done and they ended up just feeling it out.
13	* PlayingAgainstType: At least back when it was made, the big novelty factor of the film was how Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio isn't playing a PrettyBoy romantic lead, but instead a gruff mercenary.
14	* RealLifeRelative: Two women are standing in front of the airport as Danny walks by them when he arrives in South Africa. Those are his mother and grandmother.
15	* RealityIsUnrealistic:
16	** According to the director commentary, the opening raid featuring slaughter of women and children is actually toned down; the RUF did ''much'' worse, including [[DeadlyEuphemism "doing things"]] to pregnant women and children. They just showed what was necessary to establish the setting.
17	** Similarly, the training of the child soldiers is toned down. When they're forced to kill someone, the trainers often pick someone from the child's village or occasionally, [[SelfMadeOrphan the child's parents.]] There's also wider drug use than what's shown, including a mix of cocaine and ''gunpowder'' called brown-brown.
18	* ThrowItIn: The scene in the finale where Archer yells at Vandy to tell them where the stone is was improvised by [=DiCaprio=], trying to get a rise out of Djimon Hounsou. It worked well and was kept in.
19	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
20	** If Leonardo [=DiCaprio=] hadn't been able to play the part of Danny Archer, Russell Crowe was the next choice.
21	** The film's WorkingTitle was ''Okavango''.
22	** Ed Zwick was initially just hired to do a rewrite of the script, alongside Marshall Herskovitz. But he ended up getting so interested in the story that he signed on to direct the film too.
23	* WriteWhatYouKnow: One of Danny's lines in the script - "you Americans come here with your laptop computer and your bug spray and your little bottles of hand sanitizer" - was actually said to the director while he was talking to an African man. It made such an impression that he put it in the film.

Context Trivia / BloodDiamond