* ActingForTwo: [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] at the talent show. When Michael Showalter dodders onstage as elderly emcee Alan Shemper, we assume this is just Coop playing a role to deliver some standup comedy. But later on, while Shemper is still onstage, ''Coop himself'' walks in.
* AllStarCast: With some help from RetroactiveRecognition. Creator/JaneaneGarofalo, Creator/DavidHydePierce, Creator/MollyShannon, Creator/PaulRudd, Creator/ChristopherMeloni, Creator/MichaelShowalter, Creator/MichaelIanBlack, Creator/KenMarino, Creator/JoeLoTrugilo, Creator/SammLevine, Creator/BradleyCooper, Creator/AmyPoehler and Creator/ElizabethBanks all appear in the movie.
** Taken up to eleven in ''First Day at Camp'', which not only reunites the original cast, but brings in even more celebrities such as Creator/ChrisPine, Creator/JonHamm, [[Series/BoredToDeath Jason]] [[Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld Schwartzman]] and Creator/KristenWiig, just to name a few. The writer of [[http://thedissolve.com/news/6051-feast-your-eyes-on-new-trailers-for-wet-hot-americ/ this piece]] when describing the cast even wrote: "I have to stop at some point."
* DawsonCasting: Parodied. The 16-year-old camp counselors are all played by actors in their late 20s and early 30s.
** Taken up to eleven in the series. It's supposed to be a prequel and despite a 14-year time gap, it has the same cast the movie did. While most of the cast aged incredibly well, it's still hilariously obvious that the "teens" are all bearing down on middle age.
** Though subverted when ''First Day of Camp'' revealed [[spoiler:Lindsey really is an adult.]]
*** But played straight within ''First Day of Camp'' itself, as [[spoiler:24-year-old Lindsey was played by 41-year-old Elizabeth Banks. However, this does retroactively mean she wasn't Dawson cast in the movie.]]
* ProductionPosse: Several cast members of ''Series/TheState'' reunited for this movie. David Wain directed and co-wrote and cameoed, Michael Showalter co-wrote and starred as Coop, and Michael Ian Black, Ken Marino and Joe Lo Trugilo also star, and Creator/KerriKenneySilver also cameos.
* ScrewedByTheNetwork: Despite sell-out screenings at Sundance, the film struggled with finding a distributor. It wasn't until months later when USA Films offered them the insultingly low fee of $100,000 and no ownership rights. Caught in a [[SadisticChoice choice]] between taking the deal or rejecting it and wasting money on [[Creator/NathanRabin making a very expensive home movie]], they went with the deal mostly because it was the lesser of two evils. The film was unceremoniously dumped in about 30 theaters, and there are stories about the New York premiere being in the smallest auditorium of the theater. Thankfully, it became VindicatedByHistory.
* ThrowItIn: During the scene where Beth is announcing which campers need to put their trunks out for an early bus, Creator/JaneaneGarofalo improvised most of the names. You can hear her call for "David Ben-Gurion", who was the first Prime Minister of Israel. Another name she calls out is "Rabbi Menachem Schneerson"; Menachem Mendel Schneerson was perhaps the best-known twentieth century leader of the Chabad Lubavich Hassids, a movement within Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. For many of the other names, she was reading from Camp Towanda's five-year-club plaque.
* TroubledProduction: The film, being an independent production, had a tight shooting schedule of 28 days, but had to deal with it raining almost every day, a big problem for a film that mostly takes place outside. In some interior scenes, you can see both rain pouring outside the window and some cast members' breath. They had to film as much as they could outside before it started raining again.
* VindicatedByVideo: Played in under 30 theaters, made a box office of less than $300,000, and met with savage critical reception (seriously, do ''not'' look up Creator/RogerEbert's review), but has since become a cult classic and even earned a prequel and a sequel miniseries courtesy of Netflix, which received highly positive reviews.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** The shooting script included a dark comedy scene where Andy murdered a camper in order to cover up the many drowning or other deaths that occurred due to his negligence, but David Wain cut the scene after he gave the screenplay to his father to look at, because Wain's father said Wain would be disowned by him if he put something that horrible in the movie.
** Creator/NaomiWatts auditioned for Katie Finnerty.
* WorkingTitle: According to David Wain and Michael Showalter, rejected titles for the movie include ''American Love Bunk'', ''American Nametags in Underwear'', ''American Wedgie'', ''Ankle Bites: The Movie'', ''Associate Professor Neumann Goes to Camp'', ''Big American Love Wedgie'', ''Blue Balls'', ''Boner Camp'', ''Boners and Clits'', ''Boyside/Girlside'', ''Bring a Change of Underwear'', ''Buddy Check'', ''Bug Juice '81'', ''Bunk Bed America'', ''Bunk You'', ''Butt Camp'', ''Cabin Pressure'', ''Camp Fire'', ''Camp Homesucks'', ''Camp Masturbate Each Other'', ''Counselors and Cancers'', ''Damp Vagina Camp'', ''Dew Dew'', ''Fresh Grass'', ''General Swim'', ''Goin' to Third'', ''Hot American Wedgie'', ''Hot Kids in Shorts'', ''Hot Wedgie Days'', ''Internment Camp'', ''The Maine Squeeze'', ''Morning Wood'', ''Postcards From the Cot'', ''Sex, Flies and a Videotape of a Kid Masturbating'', ''Slow Dance Boner'', ''S'more, Don't Stop'', ''Suck My Big Hard Camp'', ''Taco Meat Drips on Nipples 2'', ''Teenage Sex Fields'', ''Tits and Taco Day'', ''Waterfront Blues'', ''Welcome Back Cot'' and ''Wet Hot Beds''.
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