Trivia / Small Soldiers

• Acting for Two: Slamfist and Scratch-It are both voiced by Christopher Guest, while Insaniac and Freakenstein are voiced by Michael McKean.
• All-Star Cast: The film is led by Kirsten Dunst at the height of her 90s popularity, and the toys are voiced by the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Frank Langella, George Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christina Ricci. Noted names like Phil Hartman, Jay Mohr, David Cross, and Denis Leary round out the cast.
• Billing Displacement: Kirsten Dunst is the first billed despite playing the Love Interest.
• Creator In-Joke: The music from Patton is heard as Chip Hazard gives his speech. Jerry Goldsmith, who worked on this film, had composed the music for that as well.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Christopher Guest as Scratch-It.
• The Danza: Phil Hartman as Phil Fimple.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, José Arenas was the ADR director and Brick Bazooka's voice actor.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • The scene of the Commandos attacking Phil Fimple had to be edited down after Phil Hartman's murder.
  • The Kip Killigan toy was not distributed in Oregon, as a teen called Kip Kinkel went on a shooting spree there shortly before the film was released.
• Executive Meddling: Originally, Joe Dante was told to make an edgier film that would be aimed at teens and adults. But when executives saw the marketing potential of toys based on the film (hey, they weren't wrong - the Small Soldiers toyline sold quite well) and the sponsor tie-ins came along, he was now told to soften it up into something more kid-friendly. This was so late into production that all he could do was cut "a lot of action and explosions", and even more potentially child-scarring content like Nick Nitro's demise and the Gwendy dolls was too prominent to cut. The movie ultimately got a PG-13 rating, with parents complaining it was too scary, profane and violent for kids and critics feeling that it was an uneven mashup of an edgy, satirical comedy and a family film.
• Fake American: Of the film's leads, Gregory Smith (Alan) and Phil Hartman (Phil) are Canadian.
• In Memoriam: A dedication to Phil Hartman appears at the end of the movie.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Burger King had a set of twelve toys in their Kids' Meals. These consisted of Chip Hazard, Archer, Nick Nitro, Brick Bazooka, Punchit and Scratchit, Kip Killigan, Slam Fist, Butch, Link Static, Ocula, and two different toys of Insaniac.
• Missing Trailer Scene: There are some shots of the Abernathy house getting blown up in the trailers, but this was cut to tone down the violence. This was also why the house was a complete wreck by the end of the movie despite the destruction seen on-screen being salvageable.
• Money, Dear Boy: David Cross says that he only accepted this movie for the paycheck.
• The Other Marty:
  • Jim Cummings voices Nick Nitro in the theatrical trailer and Chip in a tie-in commercial for Burger King's Rodeo Burger.
  • Gregg Berger fills in as Archer for the tie-in Playstation game.
• Posthumous Credit: The movie came out just over a month after Phil Hartman was murdered.
• Production Posse: This being a Joe Dante film, Robert Picardo and Dick Miller aren't far behind.
• Sequel in Another Medium: The Gorgonites’ Quest, a novel by co-writer Gavin Scott that was released alongside the film in 1998, concerning the Gorgonites stopping in another town and befriending a kid trying to save a local hill from being bulldozed, leading to a rematch with a new batch of Commandos.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Joe Dante wanted another actual member of the Dirty Dozen to take part, but Charles Bronson refused (interestingly, he didn't care for The Dirty Dozen). Richard Jaeckel, another Dirty Dozen cast member, was signed on, but passed away as filming started. He was replaced with Bruce Dern.
  • Before that, an idea was to have the cast of Predator voice the Commandos - Arnold Schwarzenegger for Chip Hazard, Jesse Ventura as Brick Bazooka, Shane Black as Kip Killigan, Carl Weathers as Butch Meathook, Sonny Landham as Nick Nitro and Bill Duke as Link Static. Interestingly, Jim Brown, the ultimately chosen voice of Butch Meathook, had costarred with Predator actors Schwarzenegger and Ventura in The Running Man.
  • The film was originally supposed to be edgier and aimed at teens but when the studio saw an opportunity to profit from children's toys based on the characters, Dante had to tone down the violence.
  • An animated series was in development at DreamWorks Animation in the late 90s with Greg Weisman on board, but it never got off the ground.
  • A remake, Toymageddon, was planned in 2014 but got shelved. Following Disney's acquisition of Fox in 2019, it was officially cancelled.

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