Trivia: The notice board when the killer is drilling the door through to get to Linda, has a deliberate joke pinned up on it. A sign reads "Join the Drill Team." This is a reference to the killer.
Trivia: In almost every story told in the movie, there is an ashtray that is used as an ashtray, as a soap dish and as a place you can put lose change, rings etc. This is done deliberately by the director, it has become his personal trademark.
Trivia: The entire party scene was improvised by Bill Murray.
Trivia: The movie Firefox is a Soviet built radar-invisible aircraft. In reality, the American F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter was made possible by the work of a Russian physicist, Dr. Pyotr Ufimtsev. (Soviet designers thought his theories worthless!).
Trivia: Daryl Hannah's character remarks how she sometimes wishes she was a mermaid. Two years later, she played a mermaid in "Splash" (1984).
Trivia: The annoying saxaphone player on the subway when Henry Winkler writes him a check is Ron Howard, the director.
Trivia: The 'torpedo-digging' trick Jen Moo uses in the final fight is a standard trick of all Hong Kong ninja movies made in the 80's.
Trivia: Mrs. Brisby's eldest daughter was voiced by a young Shannen Doherty, later to become famous for her role as Brenda in "Beverly Hills 90210."
Trivia: The actors inside of the Skeksis had television monitors inside of their costumes, so that they could see where they were going.
Trivia: In the original book, the boy who's friends with the snowman isn't given a name. In the film he's given a gift by Father Christmas with a nametag on it, so the filmmakers opted for James, the husband of one of the animators.
Trivia: Craig T. Nelson was originally cast as Carla's boyfriend, Jerry, but his casting was vetoed by producer Harold Schneider, despite director Sidney J. Furie's insistence. Nelson instead famously starred in contemporaneous supernatural hit Poltergeist (1982).
Trivia: Meryl Streep could only bring herself to do one take of the choice scene, she begged the movie producers not to make her do it again.
Trivia: The film producer Jörn Donner received an Oscar for best foreign movie. He is Finnish. The only Finnish person to have accomplished this to date.