Trivia / A Fish Called Wanda

• Actor-Inspired Element: The dogs seen with Patricia Hayes were her own.
• Copiously Credited Creator: John Cleese was the star, co-writer, unofficial director, and executive producer.
• Corpsing: During Otto and Wanda's sex scene, Jamie Lee Curtis reportedly had to put a pillow over her face to keep from corpsing.
• Creator Backlash: Michael Palin wrote in his autobiography that he could have given Ken more depth.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: John Cleese ranks this project among his favorites because the cast gelled together so perfectly. He enjoyed working with Michael Palin, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kevin Kline so much he brought them back together for Fierce Creatures.
• The Danza: George Thomason is played by Tom Georgeson.
• Deleted Role: James Cossin's role as a bank teller was cut from the film.
• Directed by Cast Member: An unusual and very complicated example. While Charles Crichton is the solely-credited director on the finished product, John Cleese was officially the movie's co-director during production. However, Cleese has gone on record saying that he actually did very little work as director and just agreed to act as co-director because the film's backers had concerns about letting the 78-year-old Crichton direct unsupervised. Cleese did direct a couple of scenes with Michael Palin (most likely Ken's attempts to snuff out the witness) by himself, but more to allow Crichton time to get a head-start on the editing. On the set, Crichton wore a T-shirt presented to him by Cleese and inscribed "Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill".
• Playing Against Type:
  • Most of John Cleese's more well-known characters tend to be highly-strung Jerkasses prone to bombastic rants at the drop of a pin. Archie, for the most part, is a rather pleasant, mild-mannered and quiet type. He called it "as close as I'll ever get to being Cary Grant" (whose real name was Archie Leach).
  • Michael Palin, also. In Monty Python, he was best known for being either quiet, goofy, or smarmy, but never the sort that would kill little old ladies.
• Real-Life Relative: Portia is played by Cynthia Cleese, John Cleese's daughter in real life.
• Referenced by...: a celebrated IKEA commercial in which an adult daughter catches her aging parents romping around the house in farmer fetish gear ("Time to move out?") features a Shout-Out to the "languages" scene: as Archie does, the dad grabs a photo to hide his shame, only for the choice of photo to cause further embarrassment as it depicts the interrupter (in this case the daughter) herself.
• Throw It In!: Kevin Kline started singing "Volare" during the sex scene after he ran out of Italian phrases and names of cheeses that he was able to ad lib.
• Wag the Director: Jamie Lee Curtis was originally going to have a nude scene until she pointed out that men being nude is much funnier, so John Cleese did it instead.
• What Could Have Been: Numerous alternate endings were produced for the film - the most well-known two include one that ended on a close-up of Wanda's shark slippers, implying that there wouldn't be a happy ending for her and Archie, and the other was like the final ending but a bit more "realistic" and featured Otto just dying horribly when Ken ran him over with the steamroller, and Ken's stutter turning out not to have been cured at all by his act of violence.
• Write What You Know: John Cleese entered Cambridge University as a law student, although he never became a member of the British bar.

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