Trivia / Zenyattà Mondatta

• Creator Backlash:
  • Despite the album's critical and commercial success, the members of the Police don't look back on it too fondly because of its rushed production and the problems it created for them. Sting says that he'd throw about half of Zenyattà in the trash, and the other band members agree that the album's quality suffered from the tight schedule it was made under (it was finished on the day that their world tour started).
  • Producer Nigel Gray thought the title of "Behind My Camel" was a sign of Andy undergoing this:
    He didn't tell me this himself but I'm 98% sure the reason is this: what would you find behind a camel? A monumental pile of shit.
• Referenced by...:
  • The intro to Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" interpolates the chorus to "Don't Stand So Close to Me", owed to Sting ad-libbing said intro in the studio; he received a writing credit on the Dire Straits song as a result.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Driven to Tears" is titled after a song off of this album.
  • In Viz Media, Crunchyroll, and Muse Asia's English localizations of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Oingo and Boingo are respectively renamed Zenyatta and Mondatta.
  • Two omnics from Overwatch are named Zenyatta and Mondatta.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The "Christmas Version" of the "Don't Stand So Close to Me" video came about because the band were barred from performing in Montreal's Centre Sportif thanks to issues presented by the Canadian winter. With newfound time on their hands, they decided to shoot the video for a lark, eventually releasing it 41 years later.
• What Could Have Been: "Shadows in the Rain" was originally written as an uptempo ska track, similarly to "Canary in a Coalmine" and "Man in a Suitcase". The final version, however, goes for a darker, slower, and more experimental arrangement. Sting would eventually record an uptempo jazz rock rendition on his debut solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles.

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