Trivia / Generation Kill

• Cast the Expert: An interesting case. The actor who was slated to play Sgt. Rudy Reyes became unavailable. In a stroke of genius, they hired one of their military advisers to play the role... Rudy Reyes himself. Averted with Ray Person and Jason Lilley, who both auditioned to play themselves but did not get the part because they had changed too much in the six years between the invasion and the casting call for the series.
  • The real Eric Kocher was also cast, but he did not play himself, instead he played Gunnery Sgt. Rich Barrett, platoon gunnery sergeant of Alpha Company.
  • Benjamin Busch, who played Major Todd Eckloff (Battalion XO), is an Marine Corps Reserve officer and was deployed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and later did several tours to Iraq.
• Completely Different Title: The Israeli release renamed it "דור מזוין (Generation Fucked/Fucked Generation)".
• Executive Meddling: A positive example: the first episode had major issues running over-time, partly because HBO kept re-inserting a lengthy scene that the director and producers were perfectly willing to live without and kept taking out of the cut. In the end, HBO simply allowed the episode to run over the original limit.
• Fake American:
  • In the miniseries, a few American Marines were played by foreigners. Notably Swede Alexander Skarsgård as Sgt. Brad "Iceman" Colbert and Israeli Jonah Lotan as Navy HM2 "Doc" Bryan.
  • Many of the minor American roles were played by South Africans as the show was filmed there.
• Fake Nationality: Also Moroccan-British Nabil Elouahabi played Kuwaiti translator Meesh.
• You Look Familiar: Sort of. Eric Kocher played Gunnery Sgt. Rich Barrett. Simultaneously, Owain Yeoman played Sgt. Eric Kocher. David Simon just has a thing for this on varying levels: Jeff Carisalez is also in the series, though he doesn't play himself ala Rudy Reyes, and, humorously, plays an invented character. Inversely, the real Ray Person read for himself, but being five years older, out of the Marines, settled down in life and not on Ripped Fuel, he was far too calm and sane to play the 2003 version of himself.

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