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The Bad Guys

FILM · 2022 · USA

The Bad Guys

24 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026

  • The Bad Guys — production image

24 Interesting Facts About The Bad Guys

Interesting Facts (13)

  1. #001

    The film's opening mirrors the opening of Pulp Fiction (1994), in which two characters sit facing each other in a restaurant and hold a seemingly idle conversation before it is revealed that both are on the verge of starting a robbery.

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  2. #002

    Wolf jokingly asks Snake whether he can hear colors and see sounds. In reality, snakes have an excellent sense of smell and can effectively "smell" the air. They have no sense of hearing, but they can detect vibrations, including those caused by sound. When Snake goes to the safe to crack "listening," this is accurate, since he is actually "feeling" the vibrations caused by the safe's mechanisms.

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  3. #003

    The $100 bills in the film bear the face of DreamWorks Animation president Margie Cohn.

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  4. #004

    The film's opening dinner scene, lasting two minutes, 25 seconds and seven frames, is the longest single shot in DreamWorks Animation history.

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  5. #005

    The repeated mentions that Wolf would be "Clooney" are a nod to actor George Clooney, known for playing charming, charismatic characters, and many parallels can be drawn between Mr. Wolf and Clooney's roles as Fantastic Mr. Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) (another adaptation of children's stories about a heroic thief) and Danny Ocean from the "Ocean's Eleven" film series (the leader of a crew of thieves). Rockwell also starred in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Clooney's directorial debut.

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  6. #006

    Snake's hat and shirt are a tribute to Raoul Duke, Johnny Depp's character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

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  7. #007

    The books mention that Mr. Snake is Mr. Wolf's childhood friend, but in the film Mr. Snake is 26 years older than Mr. Wolf.

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  8. #008

    The German dub of the second trailer was met with extremely negative reactions on social media. While the first was voiced by professional and well-known voice actors, the other trailer revealed that the actual German voice cast consisted of B-list celebrities and YouTubers. It was immediately widely mocked as a "bad fan-dub" or "porn dub," and petitions began to be filed to persuade the studio to use professional voice actors from the first trailer onward.

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  9. #009

    It is Pierre Perifel's directorial debut.

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  10. #010

    Wolf jokingly asks Snake whether he can hear colors and see sounds. There is in fact a medical condition called synesthesia, in which the brain's senses and sensations overlap in various ways, including hearing colors and seeing sounds.

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  11. #011

    A quick flashback shows Mr. Wolf lying on a beach towel with a pink and white heart pattern; the same pattern turns out to be on Wolf's underwear a few scenes later, when his pants are torn by a hook.

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  12. #012

    When Piranha disguises himself as a chef and hides inside a cloche to crash a party, he was dressed like the famous chef Salt Bae. After the film was released, Salt Bae gained notoriety and faced public backlash for crashing the Argentine national men's football team's World Cup party.

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  13. #013

    When Mr. Wolf narrates the heist, the code Mr. Snake wrote to steal the Golden Dolphin is "49721," the zip code of the animator who animated that frame.

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Behind the Scenes (1)

  1. #014

    A number of characters, equipment, scenes and stunts are a tribute to Monkey Punch's "Lupin III," a Japanese manga about the adventures of an unstoppable gang of outlaws.

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Characters & Cast (2)

  1. #015

    Ben Schwartz was initially offered the role of Ms. Tarantula, who was going to be male as in the original books, but he was busy working on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) (another film that premiered in 2022). The producers made the character female instead, voiced by Awkwafina.

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  2. #016

    Jim Carrey was considered for the role of Mr. Snake.

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Easter Eggs & References (6)

  1. #017

    When Wolf suggests the crew pretend to be good, Mr. Shark tells a story about a brother who had an anchor dropped on his head. This references the earlier DreamWorks Animation film Shark Tale (2004), which features two shark brothers: Frankie, who dies when an anchor falls on him, and his brother Lenny, a good man who briefly pretends to be bad.

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  2. #018

    On the construction site, a container can be seen with the graffiti "Pierre" written on it, referring to the film's director, Pierre Perifel.

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  3. #019

    While trying to be good, Wolf briefly dressed as a small old woman in a hood, a clear reference to Little Red Riding Hood.

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  4. #020

    Notably, this is one of two animated films released three months apart featuring a villain voiced by Marc Maron; the main villain here is a super-intelligent guinea pig who attaches a meteorite to a machine they invented to empower an army of guinea pigs to carry out their evil plans, while the other film is DC League of Super-Pets (2022).

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  5. #021

    While Ms. Tarantula hacks the security cameras, the smiley faces on the guards' computer screens reference the cult classic anime Cowboy Bebop (1998), in which the character Radical Edward hacks electronic devices in a similar way.

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  6. #022

    In the scene where Mr. Snake steals the code by pressing a fake fingerprint onto a briefcase, he gets the official code 12345. This references King Roland's password and President Skroob's luggage combination in the parody film Spaceballs.

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Deeper Meaning (2)

  1. #023

    The producers cited Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) as an inspiration because they wanted to try a stylish animated film. Other influences on the film include the anime shows "Lupin III," Beastars (2019) and Sherlock Hound (1984); the crime films Heat (1995), Ocean's Eleven (2001), Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994); the Belgian animated film Ernest & Celestine (2012); the science fiction film The Fifth Element (1997); and the work of artists Hergé, Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, André Franquin, Albert Uderzo and Akira Toriyama.

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  2. #024

    The dynamic between Mr. Wolf and Diane Foxington drew inspiration from Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in The X-Files (1993) and from Han Solo and Leia Organa in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).

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Sources & editorial notes

Reference databases

  • IMDb IMDb title page (trivia)

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