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Team America: World Police

FILM · 2004 · GERMANY

Team America: World Police

29 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026

  • Team America: World Police — production image

29 Interesting Facts About Team America: World Police

Interesting Facts (27)

  1. #001

    Around the 56-minute mark, the statue in Kim Jong-Il's palace is actually a heavily made-up person; the first time you see it, you can catch him blinking.

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  2. #002

    At around 1 minute in, a small detail in the Paris opening: the streets are paved with croissants.

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  3. #003

    Paramount greenlit a puppet movie on the spot, wrongly assuming it would be cheaper than live action.

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  4. #004

    Matt Damon, whom Trey Parker and Matt Stone genuinely considered a "pretty cool guy," was originally going to be smart and articulate, but once they saw the puppet they felt it made him "look retarded" and played him that way instead.

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  5. #005

    At the Peace Ceremony with Kim Jong-Il, Lisa's hair sticks are actually matches.

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  6. #006

    Matt Stone and Trey Parker rewrote the script several times before landing on something that could be done with puppets; asked about a sequel, they said there was no way they would ever work with puppets again.

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  7. #007

    Around 18 minutes in, when we first see the North Korean palace, many of the smaller buildings are really Chinese takeout boxes and cocktail umbrellas.

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  8. #008

    Around 53 minutes in, the Michael Moore puppet was stuffed with ham before being blown up.

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  9. #009

    Around the 1-hour mark, in the overhead shot of Gary lying in a huge pool of vomit, Trey Parker is actually wearing fake legs to bring his proportions closer to the puppets'; the "vomit" was a mix of soup and beer.

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  10. #010

    Trey Parker and Matt Stone toyed with including George W. Bush and John Kerry puppets but decided politics would overshadow the comedy.

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  11. #011

    Matt Stone was interviewed by Michael Moore for Bowling for Columbine (2002) because he grew up near the infamous school, but he was furious about the film's animated segment, believing Moore deliberately implied he and Trey Parker had made it. That's why the directors decided to give Moore a funny, unflattering portrayal.

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  12. #012

    As in Thunderbirds (1965), the show the film imitates, the close-ups of hands use real hands dressed up to look like puppet hands.

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  13. #013

    The MPAA gave the film an NC-17 because of the puppet sex scene around the 42-minute mark, and it was cut nine times before they got the R they wanted. Trey Parker later admitted the scene was partly there to distract the MPAA from the rest of the film; at Matt Stone's insistence, the full scene went back into the "unrated" DVD.

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  14. #014

    All the puppets used the same two bodies, one male and one female, with different heads, except Kim Jong Il, who was made much smaller.

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  15. #015

    When Trey Parker and Matt Stone showed the first footage at San Diego Comic-Con in 2004, it opened with the words flying across the screen: "Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Janeane Garofalo, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Kim Jong-Il… they will all HATE this movie!" A theatrical teaser used an even longer list.

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  16. #016

    Around 1 hour 1 minute in, when the Film Actors Guild decides to go to North Korea, everyone shouts "Qapla!", Klingon for success.

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  17. #017

    Matt Stone swore he'd never make another film with Trey Parker after the stress and tension of this one; the pair worked 17-hour days, seven days a week, until three days before the film opened.

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  18. #018

    The belt buckles on the male Team America puppets show the tails side of the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.

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  19. #019

    Before settling on the final story, one of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's ideas was an all-puppet version of The Day After Tomorrow (2004). They'd been given the script and thought it was already funny, and would be far funnier performed entirely by puppets; legal issues with the studio that owned the rights were the main reason it never happened.

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  20. #020

    According to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, everyday objects were used as props to remind viewers how small the puppets really are: in the first scene, there's a pair of nail clippers on a Team America utility belt; in Cairo, a man carries a basket of goldfish crackers on his head; and some palm trees have fronds made of banknotes.

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  21. #021

    In the opening titles, the exploding Earth is stock footage from "Star Trek: Generations," where the doomed planet is Verdian III.

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  22. #022

    Most of the "Korean" in the film is Asian-sounding gibberish, with three exceptions: 1) a North Korean soldier torturing a team member says "Die, you bastard"; 2) when Kim Jong-Il orders his soldiers to recover Team America's planes after the ambush, they answer with the Korean for "Yes"; 3) when Gary enters the palace, the soldiers ask "Who are you, you bastard?"

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  23. #023

    (Around 45 minutes) After the Panama flood scene, the "drowned" puppets literally had to be wrung out and dried for later scenes.

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  24. #024

    In the scene with Alec Baldwin and Gary Johnston in Kim Jong-Il's palace, some shots show footage of the real Alec Baldwin in a tuxedo on the screens on either side, while Trey Parker does the voice.

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  25. #025

    Bill Pope wanted to shoot with anamorphic lenses for that classic "action movie look," but no anamorphic lens could focus close enough on the puppets.

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  26. #026

    (Around 1 hour 10 minutes) The "Montage" song also turns up in "Asspen" (2002), an episode of the creators' South Park (1997).

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  27. #027

    (Around 7 minutes) Team America first meets Gary at a show called "Lease," an obvious spoof of the hit Broadway musical Rent, in which many characters are struggling with AIDS.

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Behind the Scenes (1)

  1. #028

    Bill Pope took the job because he wanted "something completely different" after The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and Spider-Man 2 (2004), all of which were shot largely in front of blue or green screens.

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Easter Eggs & References (1)

  1. #029

    Around the 44-minute mark, all the greenery in the background of the Panama sequence is cannabis.

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Related pages

Sources & editorial notes

Reference databases

  • IMDb IMDb title page (trivia)

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