Relations between director Antoine Fuqua and Bruce Willis became strained shortly after principal photography got under way. By the time filming concluded, they had vowed never to work with one another again.
The elderly African man breaking down and crying during the village atrocity scene wasn’t part of the script. He had survived an actual genocide, and the filming was so convincing that he emotionally collapsed. The rest of the cast witnessed it, and their reactions are genuine. This is noted on the DVD commentary.
The storyline is drawn from an operation carried out by Canada's Joint Task Force Two (JTF2) in Colombia. A former member of the commando wrote the original account and put it forward to the production team of Executive Decision (1996) when he met them on a set in Nevada.
On 29 October 2002, a stuntman was killed while filming a parachute scene near Oceano, California. He had leapt from 14,000 feet alongside eight other skydivers and was meant to land on the beach, but he came down about 1,000 feet off the shore and drowned.
Every actor who was cast as a Navy SEAL underwent a fortnight of boot-camp training.
A scene featuring a kiss between Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci was filmed, but later cut following a test screening.
During principal photography, all actors who portrayed members of the Navy SEALs were instructed to address one another by their characters' names, even when off-camera, to foster interaction among the SEALs.
In the 2003 film Tears of the Sun, knives from Emerson appear on screen. Hand-crafted, these blades are particularly popular with police services and military personnel.
Many of the background artists who portrayed refugees were refugees in real life.
Kevin Smith, not to be confused with the writer-director of Clerks (1994), had originally been cast to co-star alongside Bruce Willis as a supporting member of a SEAL team. Sadly, after filming on his final picture, Warriors of Virtue: The Return to Tao (2002), had wrapped, he died of head injuries sustained when he fell from a three-storey prop tower.
The title of this film was used as the subtitle for a fourth Die Hard project the studio was developing. The project still needed work, and Bruce Willis told the studio he would sign on to Die Hard 4.0 (a.k.a. Live Free or Die Hard (2007)) if he could use that title for this film.
The film's title was taken from the title of a script written by Alan B. McElroy around 1990, which follows a group of people who travel to the Amazon to set up a radio-relay station. They run into plenty of trouble en route and ultimately have to flee through the jungle to save their lives. Bruce Willis read and liked the script; he hoped it could serve as the fourth film in the Die Hard series, but that never came to pass.
While filming aboard the U.S.S. Truman in 2002, the ship's crew were utilised in uncredited roles as embassy evacuees. The casting director struggled to find older people to portray members of the embassy staff. Among those cast as embassy staff was the U.S.S. Truman's senior medical officer.
The video-game character 'Soap' in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was modelled on Lake from the 2003 film Tears of the Sun.
Roughly 54 minutes into the film, as the SEALs approach a village where "ethnic cleansing" is taking place, Silk fires at a rebel soldier from long range, striking him in the back. About 23 seconds later he appears to shoot another rebel in exactly the same fashion. In reality the two scenes are the same — the footage had been flipped.
When a Special Operations team is tasked with an assignment, they would ordinarily draw up their own plan, including E&E (Escape and Evasion) options. In the film, however, the unit is handed a mission the moment they return to the ship and are expected to go back out straight away. At the mission briefing they ask the commander what the E&E plan is. Normally the team would have worked through all those particulars themselves and then submitted their mission plan to the OIC.
Tears of the Sun is the earliest known film to portray US Navy SEALs using the Heckler & Koch MK23. The MK23 is a large offensive handgun developed in Germany for USSOCOM (United States Special Operations Command). It is chambered for .45 ACP and features a 6-inch threaded barrel, provision for a laser aiming module, and a very durable finish and recoil spring. The MK23 was used particularly often by Navy SEALs, although many preferred smaller sidearms such as the SIG-Sauer P226 (which the film also accurately displays). The film additionally includes authentic Knight's Armament suppressors fitted to the barrels.
This was the first film to be shot aboard the Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).
The US Navy SH-60B 'Seahawk' helicopters used during filming were drawn from HSL-37 'Easy Riders', a squadron based at Marine Corps Base Kaneohe on Oahu, Hawaii.
Antoine Fuqua: Makes a brief cameo as a rebel smoking a cigarette in the village skirmish sequence.
Bruce Willis is equipped with three knives, all produced by Emerson Knives. He has a Police/Military Utility Knife on his shoulder strap, a Kandahar on his right thigh, and likely another Kandahar on his calf. The Emerson Kandahar is a custom-made knife and can fetch up to $2000.
Wilhelm scream: heard from a soldier as the second blast goes off during the scene in which the rebels discover their informant's body.
The title refers to a Nigerian colloquial name for the early-morning sun-showers that fall throughout much of the first half of the film.
Akosua Busia is, in reality, the daughter of Kofi Busia, a former prime minister who was also a native prince and was deposed by a military regime.
An order to get chow, refit for a three-day Lurp and debrief covers collecting a meal, seeing the medic, re-arming and resupplying for a three-day long-range reconnaissance patrol (Lurp), and producing a report that details the actions of their previous mission along with a briefing on the next one. A high operational tempo, sleep deprivation and a range of specialised missions in which small units move quickly and employ sea, air and land operations epitomise the purpose of Navy SEAL Teams.
Cole Hauser and Nick Chinlund featured alongside Vin Diesel in the first two Riddick films. Hauser appeared in Pitch Black (2000), while Chinlund appeared in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004).
Bruce Willis appeared alongside Cole Hauser in Hart's War (2002).
Marks the debut of Hadar Busia-Singleton.
The captain instructs the SEALs: "Go and see the medic." The Army has medics; the Navy employs hospital corpsmen.
Bruce Willis and Eamonn Walker both feature in Unbreakable (2000), yet they never appear on screen together.
