GOSH! Can you believe it’s been 10 years since Napoleon Dynamite won us over with his mad skills?

The 2004 cult hit was made for only $400,000 and went on to make more than $45 million worldwide.

Sweet!

Here are some things you never knew about the film and the frizzy-haired hero:

Jon Heder’s salary: Napoleon’s salary for the film wasn’t exactly dynamite. Heder was initially paid just $1,000 for the movie, but after it became a worldwide success, he renegotiated his contract and got a much bigger pay cheque.

Uncle Rico’s diet: Actor Jon Gries played Uncle Rico but he wasn’t exactly thrilled that his character was obsessed with eating steak. Why? Because Gries is a vegetarian in real life. He did agree to chew the meat in his scenes, but never swallowed, either spitting the steak into a napkin when wiping his mouth or taking it out with his hands quickly and dropping it on the ground.

Liger: According to Napoleon, a liger (his favourite animal) is “like a lion and a tiger mixed ... bred for its skills in magic”. That’s partially true. Ligers do exist. They are in fact a hybrid cross between a male lion and a tigress and there are currently two ligers in a zoo in South Africa. (Note: they are not capable of performing magic).

Dance scene: Napoleon’s epic dance routine towards the end of the movie is perhaps the film’s most iconic scene. The co-director, Jared Hess, knew that Jon Heder liked to dance in real life so he asked him to come up with the moves himself.

“Any other film would have gotten a choreographer to work with me,” Heder said.

“But they were like, ‘No, Jon, just figure it out’. So I just winged it. I danced three times and they took the best pieces from each of those.

“Jared (Hess) and I were really pining for Jamiroquai. We were both like, ‘That is sweet dance music’. When you’re shooting in independent film, you don’t know what you’re going to get the rights to. We thought Jamiroquai might be expensive. So we danced to three different songs. To that song and another Jamiroquai song, Little L. We danced to Michael Jackson, something off of Off the Wall. Just those three. And then we got the rights to Jamiroquai. And I think that was half our budget.”

Rex: According to IMDB, Jack Black almost played the role of Rex, who taught both Napoleon and Kip his Rex Kwan Do moves. The part was played by Diedrich Bader who is most famous for his recurring role in The Drew Carey Show.

“There were two scenes where I had difficulty staying in character which was the Rex Kwon Do scene,” Heder said in an interview.

“I was busting up when Rex was doing his scene. And then when I’m throwing food at the llama, I was just laughing, I was actually throwing food at the llama, and we cut that out because there was not a clean shot.”

Kip’s braces: Aaron Ruell, who played Napoleon’s nerdy older brother Kip, actually had to wear real braces for the 22 day shoot. “I just assumed that we’d be able to Hollywood it up and there would be some temporary things I’d put in while we were shooting and I’d just kind of take them out,” Ruell said.

“And then flashforward to, you know, showing up at Jared’s (director) place a week before shooting and I’m in the orthodontist’s chair getting real braces attached to my teeth.

“They were the real deal. And quite painful for that first week. They moved my teeth.”

Ages: Jon Heder (who played Napoleon Dynamite) and Efren Ramirez (who played Pedro) were much older than the high school characters they were playing. Heder was 27 and Ramirez was 31 when the movie was filmed.