20 facts you might not know about 'Ted'

MacFarlane made his name with animation. Specifically, with Family Guy. His initial idea was to make Ted another animated show. Instead, he turned it into a live-action film.

With a TV staff at his disposal, MacFarlane got help with the Ted script. He shares credit on the screenplay with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, two longtime Family Guy writers.

Fox had produced and aired Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show — all animated programs from MacFarlane. When he said he wanted to make a film, 20th Century Fox was naturally interested. MacFarlane brought them Ted and said he planned to make his directorial debut with the film. Oh, and he wanted a budget of $65 million. Fox was hesitant, worrying the budget was too high for an R-rated comedy from a first-time director.

Blanching at a big-budget R-rated comedy, Fox wanted to turn Ted into a PG-13 film. MacFarlane, Sulkin, and Wild diligently wrote a PG-13 version of their movie. Even then, Fox passed on the film.

After Fox passed, despite a long, fruitful working relationship with MacFarlane, the project was taken to Universal. Here, Ted was not met with skepticism. Universal gave MacFarlane his $65 million budget and let him make the R-rated version of the script.

MacFarlane voices Ted himself, and Mark Wahlberg plays John, Ted’s best friend. Filling out the cast included some familiar faces, or voices, from MacFarlane’s work. The female lead of the film is Mila Kunis, who voices Meg on Family Guy. Alex Bornstein and Patrick Warburton, also voice actors on “Family Guy,” have roles.

Wahlberg and Kunis were not strangers to being in the same film. This was the third time they had worked together. In 2008, they were both in Max Payne, and in 2010, they were both in Date Night, though in separate sections of the movie.

Ribisi plays the antagonist of Ted, and he had an idea. It was the actor who came up with Donny dancing. Evidently, they wanted to use “Manic Monday” by the Bangles for Donny’s dance scene, but the price was too steep.

John receives Ted as a Christmas gift in 1985. He is a toy stuffed bear with a limited talking function. This gives us an indication of what Ted is sort of standing in for. In 1985, the Teddy Ruxpin toy was introduced.

A teddy bear wasn’t walking around on set. MacFarlane would do motion capture for Ted for the final film, but during editing, teddy bears were used to stand in for the titular stuffed bear. During filming, Ted was just a stick with eyeballs on it.

The Broccoli family has been producing and curating the world of Bond films for decades. They are pretty protective of Bond, and rarely has a Bond theme been cleared for use in a non-Bond project. MacFarlane wrote a letter to Barbara Broccoli asking permission to use “All Time High,” the theme from “Octopüssy.” The letter worked, and Broccoli cleared the song.

People just love doing Seth MacFarlane a solid! MacFarlane apparently called up astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (who was the host of MacFarlane’s production of Cosmos) to make sure the stars in the night sky were correct in every scene. To be fair, we kind of imagine Tyson as a guy who sits by the phone waiting for directors to call him up and ask about outer space accuracy.

Flash Gordon plays a key role in Ted, and Sam J. Jones, the star of that film, is one of several people who appear as themselves. However, to use footage of Flash Gordon in the movie, they had to digitally restore it for high definition.

Wahlberg is known for sticking by his family. Otherwise, Wahlburgers wouldn’t exist. It seems likely two of his brothers got name-dropped in Ted. Ribisi’s character Donny and his son Robby are named after Mark’s brothers, actors Donnie and Robert Wahlberg.

Fenway Park in Boston is home to the Green Monster, and that massive wall indicates the day they shot that scene. You can see the standings for the AL East on the Green Monster. Based on those standings, that scene was shot on May 23, 2011.

For a moment, this raunchy comedy about a teddy bear almost got a little too real. Initially, when Ted died, there was going to be a scene where John cried over it. However, MacFarlane had second thoughts and decided to cut it. In his mind, it was too depressing and didn’t fit with the rest of the film.

Universal’s faith in MacFarlane paid off. Ted made a staggering $218.8 million domestically and $549.4 million worldwide. That made it the 12th-highest-grossing movie of 2012 and the highest-grossing comedy of the year. Also, it is the second-highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.

Sure, it makes sense that Ted won Guy Movie of the Year at Spike’s Guy’s Choice Awards (the movie did have a marketing tie-in with Axe body spray, after all). However, Ted also got a nomination at the Academy Awards. “Everybody Needs a Best Friend,” written by MacFarlane and Walter Murphy and performed by Norah Jones, was up for Best Original Song.

The well for movies about foul-mouthed teddy bears was not dry. Or maybe Universal just couldn’t resist rolling the dice on a movie that was the highest-grossing comedy of 2012. In 2015, we got Ted 2. Kunis did not return. Amanda Seyfried joined the cast. Ted 2 could not replicate the breakaway success of the original. It made $215.9 million worldwide, though on a budget of $68 million.

Intellectual property simply does not stay dead. Ted is getting a prequel TV series. The show is a prequel that takes place in 1993 when John and Ted are teenagers. Ted will hit Peacock at some point.