Trivia / Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

• Author's Saving Throw: On a meta-level for the sequel's introduction. In the first film, the actual Romanian village which Sacha Baron Cohen had used to portray Borat's home were furious with being made the butt of jokes without their approval. Hence, this sequel acknowledged that Borat had humiliated Kazakhstan and was imprisoned as a result. When Borat finished serving his sentence and bade farewell to his village (Filmed in a different location obviously) for yet another mission, the villagers' reception to Borat was far less warm, and they cursed him on his way out.
• B-Team Sequel: The film was directed by Jason Woliner instead of Larry Charles, the director of the first Borat film. This is notable because Larry Charles had directed not only Borat, but also the other Sacha Baron Cohen vehicles Brüno (2009) and The Dictator.
• California Doubling: Scenes taking place in Borat's village in Kazakhstan was once again shot in a village in Romania. Though, this is not the same village as seen in the first film, given how the villagers there view Borat.
• Channel Hop: The first film was released by 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), while the sequel was released by Amazon Studios. Since Sacha Baron Cohen owned the rights to the character and 20th Century now relegated largely to franchise films under Disney, combined with Borat's controversial sense of humor clearly not meshing well with Disney, it made sense (not that Fox themselves were content with it, either). Baron Cohen also wanted it to be released before the 2020 U.S. presidential election. With most U.S. theaters either closed or operating at reduced capacity due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, streaming was quite necessary to ensure a "wide" release.
• Content Leak: Surprisingly averted. While there was a sighting of Sacha Baron Cohen trolling a right-wing rally in the middle of 2020 and it was reported that a supposed member of the KKK was spotted at a Marriott hotel a few months earlier, no one ended up piecing it together that it was all for a new movie.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Rudy Giuliani took to the airwaves and social media to loudly dispute the way he's portrayed in this film, claiming that the situation was manipulated into a character hit.
  • Judith Dim Evans, the elderly Jewish holocaust survivor Borat meets in the synagogue, passed away the summer after her scene was filmed. Her daughter, upon learning the footage was shot for a satirical comedy, filed a lawsuit to remove her mother's scene, claiming it "mocks the Holocaust and Jewish culture." She insisted that her mother was "tricked" into being in a raunchy comedy film while believing it to be a serious documentary on the Holocaust. The lawsuit was dismissed when it was pointed out (with video evidence) that Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish himself, and had broken character to tell her exactly what kind of movie this was and how it was meant to mock antisemitism, and that no serious documentary would involve someone dressing as a ridiculous stereotype and putting on a silly accent.
  • Jeanise Jones, the babysitter who instills a spark of feminism into Tutar, also came out against the movie in an interview, stating that no one broke character post-filming to tell her what was going on, leading to her being worried sick for nearly a year about Tutar's fate, as she assumed Tutar was an actual human trafficking victim, and she also felt she wasn't properly compensated for her role in the movie. She's since used her role in the movie to crowdfund for proper compensation, as she was unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Sacha Baron Cohen’s defense, he did donate $100,000 to the crowdfund. Given she presented the film at the Golden Globes, it would appear that helped.
  • Downplayed with one of the attendees at the ball (who thought it was a movie set), who reacted to the reveal of him being in a movie with mild amusement, although he clearly disagreed politically with the movie's anti-Republican lean.
• Dawson Casting: Borat's daughter is played by 24 year old Maria Bakalova, which was very necessary given some of the things she was asked to do would never fly with a real teenager.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Scenes featuring Luenell, the prostitute from the first film, were cut from the movie.
  • During her stint as a OANN reporter, Tutar Sagdiyev personally met none other than Donald Trump Jr. himself, but their scene was cut from the movie for unknown reasons, presumably as it could disrupt the movie's flow.
• Dyeing for Your Art: While it's unclear whether Baron Cohen managed to grow Borat's mustache back, Maria Bakalova revealed she did grow her body hair for Tutar's Beauty Inversion - though not in the face, which had to be done by make-up.
• Enforced Method Acting: Baron Cohen stated that he was quite genuinely worried for his life while messing around with huge crowds of Trump supporters. He actually had to flee a gun rally when someone took aim at him.
• In Memoriam: The credits have a dedication to Judith Dim Evans, the Holocaust survivor who Borat meets at a synagogue and died shortly before the film's release.
• Orphaned Reference: In Supplemental Reportings, Borat mentions that his second wife, Luenell, left him for Nursultan Tulyakbay. Luenell was originally going to appear earlier in the film when Borat returns to his family and is thrown out of the house, but her scene was cut and she is only indirectly alluded to in Subsequent Moviefilm.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Borat's son Hooeylewis first appears in a photograph in the first movie, played by then-gay pornography actor Stonie prior to transitioning to female and changing her name to Brittany Coxxx. She sadly passed away in December 2016 from complications of liver disease and hepatitis B. Despite this, Hooeylewis appears in the flesh in Subsequent Moviefilm, now played by Romanian actor Alin Popa.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, the entire voice cast from the previous film was changed. This is partly because the dub of the sequel was done in Mexico City, rather than Cuernavaca, and partly because Amazon Prime Video wanted better voice actors from the ones of the previous film. As a result, Borat goes from Bernardo Rodríguez to Óscar Flores instead.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: According to Sacha Baron Cohen, the film was originally going to be entirely centred on Borat and Tutar exploring the toxic culture that Trump's presidency had created in America, and the filmmakers hadn't expected the COVID-19 Pandemic to break out while filming. Their decision to write the pandemic into the story resulted in many of the film's most noteworthy moments, including the climactic twist that Kazakhstan's government created the virus.
• Reality Subtext: The movie builds its premise around the success of its predecessor and the huge pop cultural footprint that it left.
  • While the original Borat was incredibly profitable upon its release, it was subject to controversy in Central Asian countries, including the real Kazakhstan, due to the belief that it was mocking them and promoting harmful stereotypes. The second film begins with Borat imprisoned in The Gulag after his first documentary brought enduring national shame to Kazakhstan, and President Nazarbayev uses Borat to spread COVID-19 to the rest of the world as revenge for his country's embarrassment.
  • Sacha Baron Cohen had previously retired the character of Borat in 2007, citing that the character was now too recognisable for his deception to work anymore. In the second film, Cohen wears different disguises (with Borat himself wearing them In-Universe) in order to avoid being caught, and filming was so secretive ^note The scene where Borat wears a Klansman outfit to a Republican rally sparked an investigation from the DC branch of Black Lives Matter because they mistook it as a genuine white supremacist incident; Cohen was recognized during his infiltration of an anti-mask rally in Olympia, Washington, but most assumed it was related to Who Is America? rather than Borat that the very announcement of the movie one month before its release came as a complete shock to the world.
• Role Reprise: In the Japanese dub, the entire cast from the previous film reprise their roles, like Kōichi Yamadera as Borat.
• Sequel Gap: The film came out 14 years after the first one.
• Spoiled by the Format: Tom Hanks's surprise cameo As Himself becomes less of one given how the Prime Video app visibly highlights him as one of the only three actors on the cast list alongside Cohen and Bakalova.
• Star-Making Role: Maria Bakalova is officially credited with only 9 previous film roles and was almost completely unknown to American audiences prior to playing Tutar. Her performance in Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, however, has exponentially increased her visibility and popularity worldwide.

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