Trivia: Col Patterson's employer, Dr Beaumont, played by Tom Wilkinson, was actually eaten by a lion while visiting Africa.
Trivia: The story was inspired by the classic television show "The Twilight Zone" (1959) in the episode "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street," which depicts the denizens of the street slowly becoming crazy after a power failure. In fact, in the film's production notes, Matthew and Annie live on the corner of Maple and Willoughby (another classic TZ episode, "A Stop At Willoughby"), obvious allusions to "The Twilight Zone".
Trivia: When Dick Steele rides the horse into the elevator, the two people already in the elevator are Loren Janes and his wife Ginger. They both appeared in the movie "True Lies" which is parodying the scene portraying the same couple in the same situation. Loren Janes even provided the stunts for this movie too.
Trivia: An early draft of the script was set to feature several characters from the original series all being killed off to raise the stakes for the new characters. The producers wanted to bring back as many of the original actors as possible. All declined, as they felt it was disrespectful to the original series. As a result, only the character of Jim Phelps was brought back, albeit as a surprise villain and not a hero.
Trivia: Early in production, the film was reportedly intended to be a theatrical release as the first film became a huge hit on VHS and on cable. However, when original co-stars Kevin Bacon and Reba McEntire were unable to commit for various reasons, the budget was lowered and it became a direct-to-video feature. While this was initially disappointing, it paid off in the long run, as it launched a continuing franchise with a further five sequels and a popular (but short-lived) TV series.
Trivia: Kurt Russell kept the outfit he wore in Escape from New York. The very first day of shooting Escape from L.A., he stepped out of his trailer in that very same outfit for shooting. He and producer Debra Hill looked at each other and began laughing. Debra Hill said it was like going into a time machine.
Trivia: The film was originally written as a bit of a comedic spoof of superhero and adventure stories by "Gremlins" director Joe Dante and famed screenwriter Jeffrey Boam. Dante was planning on directing it. However, the movie was paused due to budget concerns, and Dante left the project. When it was put back into production, the script was re-written by several ghost writers, and director Simon Wincer decided to play the comedy 100% straight, which original director Dante felt was a huge mistake.
Trivia: This film marked the directorial debut of Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Trivia: Steven Seagal had some sort-of religious "breakthrough" before filming began and decided he didn't want to kill any villains in the movie. This caused some friction on the first day, when he was set to film a scene where he killed Stephen Tobolowsky. Tobolowsky, knowing how spiritual Seagal was, ended up convincing Seagal that killing his character was the right thing to do, as it would allow his character to be redeemed and reborn in a new body through reincarnation. The scene was filmed as it was scripted. Later, however, Tobolowsky got a call from the director, who informed him that Seagal kept improvising lines implying that Tobolowsky survived. Tobolowsky ended up having to come back out and record some wonky dialog of his character screaming "Finish me off!" to imply he survived and appease Seagal. In the end, the lines weren't used and Seagal's improvisations were simply cut out, so Tobolowsky is killed off as was originally planned.