Trivia / Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

• Actor-Inspired Element: Johnny Depp was deeply involved with the story design, frequently meeting the writers to show what he was interested in doing, and in the words of Rossio, being "involved in coming up with story lines, connecting characters, creating moments that we would then fashion, shape and then go back." Among Depp's suggestions were turning Phillip into a missionary and having a Spanish contingent following the protagonists.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Penélope Cruz was the only choice for the role of Angelica. She agreed to the role without reading the script.
• Banned in China: The film was denied a release in China because the story line consisted of ghosts, the afterlife, and the supernatural.
• B-Team Sequel: Gore Verbinski was unable to return as director due to his commitment to Rango.
• California Doubling: Location shooting on the previous films was in the real Caribbean. To keep the budget lower, this one was mostly in Hawaii, with some scenes also in Puerto Rico and... California.
• Cast the Expert: King Ferdinand VI is portrayed by Sebastián Armesto, son of Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a famed historian who specializes in the Spanish Empire.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The Spanish second-in-command that looks just like Alatriste is played by British actor Gerard Monaco. King Ferdinand VI is technically the case too, as his actor Sebastián Armesto is a Brit of Spanish ancestry.
  • British actor Richard Griffiths plays German-born King George.
• Follow the Leader: Sort of a crossed example. After the success of Spanish swashbuckling TV series Águila Roja, another company decided to try luck with a pirate-themed series appropriately named Piratas, and they gave the main role to Óscar Jaenada for his work in On Stranger Tides (where he plays The Spaniard).
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Penélope Cruz. Thank God for elastic corsets and puffy shirts. (The scene where her character seeks clemency by claiming to be pregnant may have been added as Reality Subtext.) For some of the more intensive stunt and sword work, her younger sister Monica filled in.
• Prop Recycling: The Queen Anne's Revenge was built atop the same ship that was the Black Pearl in the previous movies.
• Troubled Production: More on a financial side than a production one. A tighter schedule and smaller production wound up having the opposite effect that Disney wanted. Rather than cutting costs compared to the last film, the budget ballooned up and made this the most expensive film ever made (adjusted for inflation), with a total expenditure of $410 million, exceeding At World’s End’s formidable budget by over a hundred million dollars. Adjusted for inflation, it holds its record, beating massively expensive epic events like Avengers: Endgame and Justice League (2017). To say Disney’s plans to reduce this film’s costs backfired would be an understatement.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Alfred Molina was considered for the part of Blackbeard before Ian McShane was cast.
  • Megan Fox was considered for the role of Syrena before the casting of Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey.
  • Johnny Depp and Keith Richards tried to persuade Mick Jagger to audition for the part of a pirate elder.
  • The mermaids were initially designed to be much less human in appearance. Concept art◊ depicted them with longer tails, all-black eyes, fish-like features, long, seaweed-like tendrils for “hair”, a veil-like membrane covering their bodies, and no clear distinction between their “human” and “fish” halves. The shift to a more traditional, half-human half-fish creature design happened fairly late in the production; according to the art director and VFX supervisor on the film, producer Rob Marshall decided the designs were too extreme after the film was nearly in its completed form. That said, the original mermaids do survive in some form: there are storyboards◊ detailing a more drastic transformation for Syrena after she slips out of the tank, and the “mermaid corpse” props used for the scene in which Barbossa and his crew find the dead mermaids on the beach follow the original concept.

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