Trivia / Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp

• Acting for Two: Michael Showalter plays both Coop and President Ronald Reagan. This proceeds from how he also played two roles in the film.
• All-Star Cast: And how. For starters, the entire original cast returns, and while they've been mostly pretty successful the biggest names are Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, and Elizabeth Banks, with H. Jon Benjamin getting a live role this time. New additions and guest stars include Lake Bell, Jason Schwartzman, John Slattery, Michael Cera, Jon Hamm, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Jordan Peele, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Bruce Greenwood.
• Dawson Casting: Even more ridiculous than the film with everyone being fourteen years older but playing a couple months younger. And there's a couple special cases, as Lindsay is really an adult undercover for a magazine article (though 41 year old Elizabeth Banks is still playing significantly younger than her real age), and Abby is played by a real teenage actress until she gets her first period.
  • Though funnily enough, many viewers have noted the joke largely falls flat as many of the actors don't seem to have aged a day (the big exception being Michael Showalter, who is not only visibly older but has also put on a significant amount of weight).
  • Kinda subverted with Samm Levine, who at his 33 years still sounds very much like in the original film, filmed not so long after acting in Freaks and Geeks.
• Descended Creator: Michael Showalter as Coop and Ronald Reagan; David Wain as Yaron.
• Real-Life Relative: Beth Dover, Shari's actress, is married to Joe Lo Truglio, who plays Neil.
• The Other Darrin: George Dalton replaces Liam Norton as Arty "the Beekeeper" Solomon.
• Troubled Production: The series had a hell of a time dealing with the large cast's various schedules, as many of them had become much bigger stars since doing the film and had a lot of other stuff going on. Bradley Cooper caused the most problems, with all his scenes having to be filmed in a single day (funnily enough, this means he experienced the show's story in real time) and the character still having to spend some time as another actor wearing a ski mask. Luckily, the show's parody nature meant they could easily just pass this off as another joke.

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