Trivia / Borat

• Banned in China:
  • In all Arab countries except Lebanon. Film censors in those countries were so disgusted by the offensive content in the movie that, according to one censor in the United Arab Emirates (which didn't ban the movie outright, but trimmed it down heavily), they made their decisions before even finishing watching the film. Most of these bans have been lifted, but the film is still censored heavily.
  • Kazakhstan also banned the film, for obvious reasons, but the government later publicly admitted that the film was responsible for a massive tourist boom in said country. Go figure.
• Bilingual Bonus: Borat's speech is peppered with real Eastern European and Central Asian languages as well as Hebrew (the last likely being because Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish), plus helpings of actual gobbledygook. On the other hand, Azamat is speaking authentic Armenian (specifically, according to That Other Wiki, the Eastern dialect) — his actor, Ken Davitian, is of Armenian descent.
• California Doubling: Just about any scene taking place in Borat's home village in Kazakhstan is actually shot in a Romani village in Romania. The villagers were told that the film would be a documentary about the poverty of the Romas. Once the film got released and the villagers found out about the film's true nature, they sued the production crew but was unsuccessful. This makes Borat being declared a Persona Non Grata — but strangely enough, not his actor — by the whole village.
• Colbert Bump: The actual nation of Kazakhstan gained a boost in tourism because the title character hails from a fictional version of it.
• The Danza: Luenell Campbell as the prostitute "Luenell".
• Dyeing for Your Art: Sascha Baron Cohen really does grow his hair and mustache out in order to play Borat. Also, in order to make the unsuspecting participants really believe they're interacting with an ignorant foreigner, there's only one Borat costume that's never been washed or clean the entire time Baron Cohen's played him.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • All of the people on camera who didn't know that the film isn't a real documentary. Of course the same goes for Sacha Baron Cohen himself: had he ever broken character in front of these people, he'd be in a lot of trouble.
  • During the nude fight scene, Borat can be seen very deliberately raising and lowering his arm while his producer is on top of him. This was the pre-arranged signal that Baron Cohen was having trouble breathing and wanted to cut. Larry Charles, the director, ignored the signal and kept the scene going.
• Jews Playing Nazis: The openly anti-Semitic Borat is portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen, who is Jewish himself. When Borat speaks Kazakh in-universe, Baron Cohen is actually speaking Hebrew.
• Screwed by the Network: Attempted, but backfired. As noted below, Fox felt the film wouldn't survive the controversies surrounding its production and dumped it to 837 theaters with little promotion. Once the highly positive reactions came out, however, audiences went to whatever theater was showing it in droves. So the film industry's jaw dropped when Borat ended up topping its opening weekend against all the other competitors with a $26.4 million haul, instantly making its $18 million budget back. Fox ended up slowly releasing the movie to more theaters in the weeks that followed.
• Sequel Gap: 14 years between Cultural Learnings and Subsequent Moviefilm.
• Sleeper Hit: Fox had little confidence in the film due to the amount of controversy from those involved in the film complaining that they were humiliated during production, as well as outspoken criticism from Arab countries who refused to show the film. The studio attempted to sabotage the film's release by releasing it in just 837 theaters on its opening weekend, but it was instead a critical success. Thus, not only did it actually manage to dominate the box office that weekend despite its competitors opening in four times that many theaters, but it became the highest grossing mockumentary of all-time.
• Star-Making Role: This film indeed launched Sacha Baron Cohen's Hollywood career. He was previously only famous on television. Also brought him fame in the U.S.; he was previously widely known only in his native UK.
• Throw It In!: Immediately after Borat's attempt at singing the national anthem at the rodeo, a horse tumbles to the ground behind him and throws the girl riding it. This was a completely unscripted accident that happened to get captured on camera.
• What Could Have Been: The movie was originally going to receive an unauthorized sequel called My Brother, Borat created by the Kazakh government, and the plot was going to revolve around an American tourist called John who meets Borat's mentally-challenged brother, Bilo (Borat did mention having a "retard brother" named Bilo in the actual film, during the church scene), where they explore the real Kazakhstan, and the whole point of the movie was to show the world that Kazakhstan is actually a modern and well-developed country, and nothing like how it was portrayed in Borat as a dirty, underdeveloped cesspool. Despite this, it would still have featured humor similar to the original film, except this time, the pranks would have been directed to Bilo, such as him being raped by a donkey. However, the production for the unauthorized sequel appears to have been shelved for unknown reasons, since there hasn't been any update on the film since it was first announced in 2010, and as of 2020 (when an actual, authorized sequel was released), it has not been released to the public.

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