Trivia for
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

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• When Sacha Baron Cohen speaks Kazakh it is mostly Hebrew disguised by a heavy fake Eastern European accent. The Hebrew is quite understandable and contains many in-jokes. Sacha Baron Cohen admitted this in a rare "out of character" radio interview on National Public Radio in the USA.
  
  
• This film broke Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)'s record for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in fewer than a thousand theaters.
  
  
• The police were called on Sacha Baron Cohen 91 times during the production of this film.
  
  

• The suit Sacha Baron Cohen wears when playing Borat has deliberately never been cleaned.
  
  
• The original director Todd Phillips left the production after shooting the rodeo/"Star Spangled Banner" scene, citing "creative differences".
  
  
• The A in "BORAT" on the DVD cover is actually the letter D in the Cyrillic alphabet. Also on the inside DVD cover, the R in "BORAT" is backwards, which is actually the character "Ya" in Cyrillic.
  
  
• The character of "Borat" was heavily criticized by the Kazakh Government, "being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is incompatible with the ethics and civilized behavior of Kazakhstan's people". Sacha Baron Cohen aka "Borat" gave a faked press conference at the White House gates on 29 September 2006, just one day before an official visit of Kazakhstan's president. The Kazakh government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Borat's claims, running a four-page advertisement in The New York Times implicitly rebutting many of the claims made by Borat. Kazahkstan has since changed their strategy by playing along, going so far as inviting Borat to visit Kazahkstan.
  
  
• The European Center for Antiziganism Research, which works against negative attitudes against Roma and Sinti people, accused the producers of defamation and inciting violence against the ethnic group. Thus, it filed a complaint with prosecutors in Germany (October 2006).
  
  
• The character of Borat originated as short pieces on the British TV show "Da Ali G Show" (2000).
  
  
• Borat is based on a Russian doctor Sacha Baron Cohen once met. He said the doctor was completely hilarious, but it was unintentional.
  
  
• Most of the footage from the Kazakh national anthem segment at the end of the film is made up of 1980's era Estonian TV commercials. It also features a number of political figures, the current president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev among them.
  
  
• Borat's greeting in the film's trailer - "Jak sie masz!" - is a common Polish greeting, roughly translated to "How are you?" Other phrases in Polish used by Borat are Dzien Dobry (Good Morning) and Dziekuje (Thank you).
  
  
• Azamat Bogatov is actually speaking Armenian. Ken Davitian is of Armenian descent.
  
  
• Borat and his wife were half-siblings (as explained when he meets Pamela Anderson)
  
  
• The subtitles in Borat are Cyrillic subtitles. Most of these subtitles are real Cyrillic, but they contain many errors, mostly the incorrect use of Cyrillic letters. Some subtitles make no sense, for example the gay pride parade subtitle reads "Meal Society of the 'Magnolia' manor". Some subtitles are nothing more than a random stream of Cyrillic letters, for example the title of the Kazakh TV channel at the beginning of the movie, and the supposedly Kazakh title of the movie later. The geographical names on the maps are almost all gibberish, except for the names in the largest print, such as "America" or "London".
  
  
• When Azamat opens the fridge at his apartment in Hollywood you can see the head of their bear.
  
  
• Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Steve Martin, all of whom are huge fans of Sacha Baron Cohen, all contacted him about having a cameo in the movie. But Sacha refused because it would have ruined some of the gags if they knew what was going on.
  
  
• The DVD packaging was intentionally altered so that upon removal from the sleeve it looks like a Khazakstani bootleg of the film.
  
  
• In the scene where Borat presents a heavyset woman chopping wood with an axe as Oxanna, his wife, the woman's reply has nothing to do with the English subtitles - where she supposedly calls Borat a "skinny piece of shit". In fact she replies with a Romanian curse, something that translates as "Who am I?! Who am I?! Go to the devil into your mother's c*nt!"
  
  
• Seth Rogen and Patton Oswalt made uncredited writing contributions.
  
  

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