Trivia / Strike Back

• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: When Project Dawn was announced, Richard Armitage was already involved with filming The Hobbit. Due to Armitage's limited availability for the show, Armitage's character, John Porter was killed off in the show to inject drama into the show.
• California Doubling:
  • Cape Town stands in for a variety of international locations. Averted in episodes three and four, which are set in and around Cape Town.
  • episodes five and six of Vengeance are the aversion. The final episodes take place in South Africa as well.
  • For Shadow Warfare, episodes 1-4 are shot in Cape Town, the rest of the series in Budapest. Episodes 5 and 6 are again the aversion. Episode 1 is pretty obvious when a road in "northern California" has a white center dividing line and yellow fog lines on the sides—the exact opposite of road markings in the United States.
  • For Legacy, Hungary stands in for North Korea, Austria and Switzerland.
  • For Retribution, filming locations in Johor, Malaysia, are used to double for Myanmar, India, and Indonesia. Even two segments supposedly set in frigid and snowy Russia were filmed in Malaysia. Averted in Episodes 1 and 2, which take place in Malaysia.
• Creator Backlash: Sullivan Stapleton grew embarrassed of his character's frequent sex scenes because they didn't do much to advance the plot and because he'd have to simulate sex with actresses he'd meet just before shooting said scenes. He eventually asked the writers to at least give some sort of explanation as to why Scott was so promiscuous, leading to the revelation, developed through the later portions of Series 3 and throughout Series 4, that Scott had been so traumatized by his experiences that he is desperately searching for intimacy.
• Fake Nationality: Both the Cinemax leads. Specifically:
  • Fake Brit: Stonebridge, played by Philip Winchester (American).
  • Fake American: Scott, played by Sullivan Stapleton (Australian) and Samuel Wyatt, played by the Australian Daniel MacPherson.
  • Karl Matlock is also a Fake American, played by Irish actor Vincent Regan.
  • Pakistani terrorist Latif is played by British actor Jimi Mistry, whose parents are Irish and Indian.
  • Fake Russian: Serbian Ivana Miličević as Albanian Mafiya queen Arianna Demachi. . .who turns out to be a Russian agent, and English/Turkish actress Yasemin Allen as Katrina Zarkova.
  • Zibabwean political activist Walter Latulu is played by British actor Eamonn Walker.
• Fatal Method Acting: Closely subverted during the final action sequence in Episode 10 of "Vendetta". Although Jamie Bamber did an otherwise excellent job of piloting the speedboat, he got caught up in the camera boat's wake at one point and nearly capsized. At the speed he was going, he and his co-stars would have indeed have likely been killed or at least seriously injured.
• Money, Dear Boy: Chris Ryan was so disheartened by his experiences with Ultimate Force that he was only interested in financial compensation when producers approached him about adapting his novel for Strike Back.
• No Stunt Double: Jamie Bamber is driving the boat during the chase sequence in the finale (he has a boat license and was thrilled that the director and stunt coordinator allowed him to use his skills).
• Playing Against Type:
  • Michelle Yeoh as Mei Foster. You'll find out.
  • Nice Guy Jamie Bamber adds to the handful of deviations from his customary Nice Guy roles in his role as Anti-Hero Colonel Alexander Coltrane, who despite being one of the good guys, is often as ruthless as the villains.
• Production Posse: Frequent director Michael J. Bassett and Philip Winchester previously worked together on Solomon Kane.
• Underage Casting: Part of Coltrane's Dark and Troubled Past is an especially traumatic mission in the Balkans in 1992, when he was a lieutenant. At that time, his portrayer (Jamie Bamber), would have been only 19 and couldn't possibly have been ranked that high.
• Wag the Director: It was Jamie Bamber's idea that Coltrane and Wyatt get into a fight, which he described as "a brothers fight". He also asked to drive the boat during Episode 10's chase scene.

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