Trivia

The actor Steve Coogan was 58 when he portrayed Tom Michell. In real life, Michell was only 23 when these events took place.

There is a story line about Tom's 13-year-old daughter, which was fabricated for the film. Interestingly, this isn't the first recent penguin film to use this plot device - the 2024 film "My Penguin Friend" also featured a protagonist whose child had died, using this as a way to explain the character's intense attachment to his animal companion.

The 19-year-old character Sofia is also a fictional creation of the film.

The penguin, Juan Salvador, is named after the eponymous title character of "Juan Salvador Gaviota," the Spanish translation of the 1970 novella "Johnathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach. The novella is about a outcast seagull, named Johnathan Livingston, who finds joy and purpose in perfecting flying for flying's sake, achieving a Nirvana-like state and then seeking to help other seagulls along the path of happiness and transcending potential.

Jonathan Pryce plays the headmaster at a private boys school in Argentina. The film starts on March 24, 1976, when the Argentine military overthrew the government of Isabel Perón, widow of populist president Juan Perón. In the 1996 film of the musical Evita, Jonathan Pryce plays Juan Perón. (Madonna plays his second wife Eva, known as "little Eva" or Evita. Evita died of cancer at age 33, and Juan married Isabel, 30 years his junior.)

This is at least the third Argentinian-themed film for Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce, who previously played Argentinian president Juan Perón in Evita, and Pope Francis II (who was Argentinian) in The Two Popes.