Trivia / Black Hawk Down

• Ability over Appearance: No effort was made to find actors who looked like the real soldiers and everyone involved was cast solely for their acting talents. Justified as for a large part of the film, everyone is half-hidden under a combination of helmets, dirt, and sweat; even with the retroactive All-Star Cast it's not easy to recognize someone once they're out in the field.
• All-Star Cast: A lot of the actors became significantly bigger names in the following years - Tom Hardy, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Ioan Gruffudd, Hugh Dancy. Josh Hartnett and Ewan McGregor were also pretty big names at the time and are still quite recognizable. There are also some very well-known character actors such as Sam Shepard, Jason Isaacs, William Fichtner, Kim Coates and Tom Sizemore.
• Approval of God: The scene with the recoilless rifle didn't occur in real life but the members of Task Force Ranger who did the DVD Commentary track all said that they thought it was a cool sequence and that they enjoyed it.
• Backed by the Pentagon:
  • Complete with the actors being trained by actual Rangers and Green Berets, and some of the participants in the actual battle appearing as extras in the movie. (Amusingly, this would be how one Ranger ended up in the Screen Actor's Guild.)
  • That the military agreed to provide helicopters for the film came as a relief to Ridley Scott, as Black Hawks aren't available for civilian use and he desperately didn't want to have to use the Hueys he'd procured as a contingency.
• Blooper:
  • While Hoot (Eric Bana) mans the Humvee's 50-caliber machine gun, his hands are usually gloved; however there's a close-up where they are not.
  • In one of the last scenes, there is a guy in a white shirt inside a Humvee where everyone else is in fatigues.◊
• California Doubling: Morocco stands in for Somalia, as the latter country's civil war was still ongoing during filming. The DVD booklet even has the producers saying "Never go to Mogadishu, you probably won't get out of there alive."
• Cast the Expert:
  • In wide shots, those were actual Army Rangers fast-roping from UH-60s.
  • The choppers were also operated by pilots from the 160th SOAR, some of whom were participants in the actual battle.
  • Keith Jones, the Little Bird pilot who pulls Busch out from the wreckage and gives Eversmann an update on the crash site, was played by himself, reenacting his actions in Mogadishu.
• Completely Different Title:
  • The French title is La Chute du faucon noir, which literally means The Fall of the Black Falcon, but as it refered to a literal, living, bird. A literal translation would be Un Black Hawk à terre.^note It's how the Title Drop line is translated in the movie.
  • The Brazilian title is Black Falcon in Danger. Yes, they changed the bird (hawk is 'gavião').
• Creator Backlash: PVT Kowalewski's actor Brendan Sexton III didn't like working on the film because he felt it glorified the battle and war in general and depicted the Somalis as savages.
• Dawson Casting: 18-year-old PFC Todd Blackburn played by 23-year-old (at the time) Orlando Bloom.
• Dueling Movies: This came out within a month of the similarly themed war film Behind Enemy Lines. Each centering on American military humanitarian efforts from the 1990s in a troubled world region and how soldiers become caught trapped in the domain of their enemy after an assignment goes awry.
• DVD Commentary: Features several, one from Ridley Scott mixed in and out with Jerry Bruckheimer, one from the book's author and the film's consultant, Mark Bowden with the screenwriter Ken Nolan and one more featuring the soldiers who served in the conflict including the real Eversmann.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The actors playing Rangers were sent to Fort Benning, given haircuts, and put through a grueling week-long boot camp being trained by actual Rangers while living in barracks that were so old that they were going to be torn down once the actors left. William Fichtner, Eric Bana, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, on the other hand, spent a week having fun (immediately being taught how to conduct raids and how to use explosives) with genuine Delta Force operators while staying in a Marriott hotel. Ron Eldard visited the 160th SOAR, listened to a lecture by the real Michael Durant, and flew simulators to try and better understand how to be a Black Hawk pilot.
• Fake American: A large number of the actors who played American soldiers are actually from different countries. The list includes: Ewan McGregor (Scottish), Eric Bana (Australian), Kim Coates (Canadian), Ioan Gruffudd (Welsh), Ewen Bremner (Scottish), Jason Isaacs (English), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish), Tom Hardy (English), Matthew Marsden (English), Orlando Bloom (English) and Hugh Dancy (English).
• Follow the Leader: This film came in the wake of Saving Private Ryan which opened up for more war films that were realistically violent but also reverent towards the troops and their sacrifices. And following up on it as a meta-example, there are a few films and many, many notable video games paying homage to this, including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots,^note the first chapter is set in Morocco - the place standing in for Somalia in the film, appropriately enough Modern Warfare,^note the first game's American campaign is influenced by Black Hawk Down, particularly "Shock and Awe" where the player lands to rescue a downed pilot, and the third heavily focuses on a Delta Force team lead by a character voiced by William Fichtner, as well as a multiplayer map that's set at the first Black Hawk crash site and Resident Evil 5^note set generally in Africa, albeit taking a far more fantastic angle amongst others.
• From Entertainment to Education: The film is used as an educational tool for Navy Seals and shown to them just before they start hell week.
• In Memoriam: Ridley Scott dedicated this film to the memory of his mother Elizabeth Scott.
• Irony as She Is Cast: This revolves more around it's reception but the film's success and acclaim in the wave of patriotic fervor and love for the military that took hold just after 9/11 is somewhat ironic given that the director is British and many cast members are non-American.
• The Other Marty: Ben Foster was originally cast as Cpl. James 'Jamie' Smith, but dropped out due to a serious injury sustained during basic training.
• Real-Life Relative: The photo of a wife and child that Durant is looking at is actually a photo of Eric Bana's wife and child. The props department forgot to take a photo of a wife and child with them, so asked Bana's wife and child who were traveling with him if they could use a photo of them in the movie.
• Reality Subtext: When Orlando Bloom auditioned for the role, he informed the casting directors that he knew what it was like to break his back (as he had done so only a couple of years before when climbing out on a drain pipe from a friend's flat). His character in this movie breaks his back after falling from the helicopter.
• Release Date Change: The film was originally slated to open on March 1 2002. However, following successful test screenings in October 2001, that release was bumped up to January with special screenings arranged in December to help the film qualify for Academy Award consideration.
• Throw It In!:
  • The set was constantly bothered by stray dogs running into shots. Ridley Scott kept them in because he liked the authentic feel of their presence. Eight dogs were adopted by various members of the production and were eventually brought back to the US with them.
  • A take shows a soldier falling out of the truck in the convoy. This was an outtake that Ridley Scott chose to leave in.
• Uncredited Role: There's no record of who played Lieutenant Tom DiTomasso.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The production almost had to use Hueys, going so far as to obtain the helicopters and making preparations to paint them black, because the Department of Defense was hesitant to provide Black Hawks for filming.
  • Ridley Scott offered Russell Crowe the role of Sgt. Norm "Hoot" Hooten, the Delta squad leader. However, Crowe had to turn down the role due to scheduling conflicts with A Beautiful Mind. Crowe, a huge fan of Chopper, strongly recommended that Eric Bana take the role in his place.
  • Michael Madsen was offered the role of Danny McKnight but was forced to turn the role down because of scheduling conflicts with Big Apple (2001).
  • Woody Harrelson was considered for CWO Clifton Wolcott.
  • According to actor Brendan Sexton III, the rehearsal draft of the screenplay featured several additional scenes that were cut from the shooting script, most of addressed and which dealt with the moral ambiguity and socio-politics surrounding American involvement in Somalia, making the conflict far less black-and-white. The scenes were apparently cut under pressure from the Pentagon, and Sexton ultimately regretted making the film, as it conflicted with his own feelings about the conflict.

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