Trivia for
Madagascar (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• At one point, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani were considered for the voice of Gloria the Hippo before Jada Pinkett Smith signed on.
  
  
• Harry Gregson-Williams was originally attached as the film's composer, but was replaced by Hans Zimmer. A few weeks earlier, the opposite had occurred for another film: Gregson-Williams replaced Zimmer for the scoring duties of Kingdom of Heaven (2005).
  
  
• Early on, the plot was based on a group of activists who liberate the animals from their cages.
  
  
• The penguins originated from a film director Eric Darnell was developing, called "Rockumentary", about a Beatles-like rock quartet. When that project was canceled and Darnell was moved to this movie, he incorporated the penguins into the script, changing them from musicians to military commandos.
  
  
• The shot of Times Square after Marty asks the police horse for directions prominently features a Hewlett-Packard logo. Hewlett-Packard is the official computer provider for Dreamworks Animation.
  
  
• None of the main character animals (lion, zebra, giraffe or hippo) are actually housed at the Central Park Zoo. There are penguins.
  
  
• WILHELM SCREAM: as the large crowd of people come charging up the stairs at Grand Central Station, thinking that Alex is chasing them.
  
  
• When Melman accidentally burns the wooden statue that Alex created, Alex is shown on the ground yelling: "You burned it! Darn you all to HECK!" This is a reference to Charlton Heston's line at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968).
  
  
• Skipper the penguin's line in Grand Central Station ("We've been ratted out, boys.") is almost identical to Jack Nicholson's line in Batman (1989) when the crew of thugs opens a safe to find it empty ("We've been ratted out here, boys").
  
  
• The scene where Alex is dreaming about steaks floating down around him is similar to the scene in American Beauty (1999) where Kevin Spacey's character dreams about rose petals falling around a young woman.
  
  
• When Alex is creating the wooden statue, he talks to a basketball that he calls 'Spalding'. This is a reference to Tom Hanks' Cast Away (2000).
  
  
• During the scene in the plane, the king refers to the 'foosa' and all the animals panic. One lemur comes into frame, pointing to a book titled 'To Serve Lemur' and says "It's a cookbook!". This is a reference to a 1951 short story by Damon Knight, titled 'To Serve Man'.
  
  
• During the scene where "Private" is attempting to gain access to the oil tanker controls, "WHATApiece OFworkIsPenGuin" can been seen on the computer screen behind him. This is a reference to the Shakespeare quote, "What a piece of work is man!" from “Hamlet”.
  
  
• Alex's line, "It's like billions and billions of helicopters", is a nod to the astronomer Carl Sagan who endeared the phrase "billions and billions" to popular culture during the award winning PBS series "Cosmos" (1980).
  
  
• According to the patch the captain is wearing, the name of the boat is the "S.S. Act II."
  
  
• Sacha Baron Cohen improvised the line "It's got a gecko on it", and all of the following dialog related to the gecko. The filmmakers found it so funny that they went to the extra work of creating a CG gecko for the shot.
  
  
• The look of the jungles in Madagascar is based on the paintings of Henri Rousseau.
  
  
• Melman the giraffe wears tissue boxes on his feet. This is a reference to Howard Hughes who was also a hypochondriac and suffered OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). In his later years, Hughes wore tissue boxes on his feet believing this would keep away germs.
  
  
• The lead quartet were originally to be a lion, a zebra, a hippo, and an okapi. Melman was changed to a giraffe to make him a more familiar animal.
  
  
• Jeffrey Katzenberg admitted that he was disappointed with the film's third act.
  
  
• The airplane that the Lemurs hold court in is a Lockheed Electra, the same airplane as Amelia Earhart disappeared in on July 2, 1937.
  
  
• Director Tom McGrath based his voice of one of the penguins on the voice of friend and composer 'Shawn Patterson'; known for his Charlton Heston impressions and frequent failed use of the "Jedi mind trick".
  
  
• At the beginning of the film when someone is taking numerous pictures of Alex The Lion the first pose Alex pulls is the 'Magnum' pose made famous by Derek Zoolander - also played by Ben Stiller.
  
  
• In the scene in the plane, Julien, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, is waving around an arm from a human skeleton. At one point it make the "westside" sign (middle two fingers crossed so that the four fingers look like a W). This is a nod to Ali G, one of Sacha Baron Cohen's earlier characters.
  
  
• When Alex and Marty find each other on the beach and Alex remembers that he is mad at Marty, Marty swears by assigning words to the letters of an acronym. They are "O"h "S"ugar "H"oney "I"ce "T"ea.
  
  
• When the camera pans backward from Alex's crate in the ocean, the sea foam around him creates the head of a lion. Foam makes the face, and the absence of foam around that makes the mane. Alex is in the left eye of the face.
  
  
• The German actor Gerald Schaale is the usual dubbing voice of 'David Schwimmer', but in the German version of Madagascar he didn't dub Schwimmer's character Melman, but the sweet lemur Mort instead.
  
  
• When Alex is chasing Marty (to eat him), the music that plays is the theme from "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" (1963).
  
  

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