Gremlins (1984)

Trivia: When Billy's mom takes the picture of Gizmo at the beginning, Gizmo becomes frightened and runs over to Mr. Peltzer. When the scene is slowed, you can see the puppeteer's hand underneath while operating the Gizmo doll. Not a mistake as needs slo-mo, but worth a look. (00:19:10)

Trivia: At the beginning of the film, when Billy is late for work, you see two films playing at the movie theater: "A Boy's Life" and "Watch the Skies." The former was the original title for "E.T." and the latter was the original title for a proposed sequel to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Two films directed by executive producer Steven Spielberg. (00:08:30)

Trivia: The word "mogwai" means "evil spirit". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogwai.

Trivia: At the inventors convention, you see many cameos: Robbie the Robot, The Time Machine from the George Pal version, Steven Spielberg as the man on a motorized wheelchair, and Jerry Goldsmith (the film's composer) as a man outside the phone booth wearing a cowboy hat. (00:43:05)

Trivia: The original script featured a scene where the gremlins attack a McDonalds and eat the customers, but refuse to touch the hamburgers.

Trivia: When the first nasty gremlin is scrabbling around the darkened schoolroom, at one point we see a scaly green hand reach up and grab an apple off the teacher's desk; we hear munching; and then the gremlin says something and throws the apple away. If you're not Jewish, and you saw this film with someone who is, they may have laughed, and you may not have known why. What the gremlin says is "Trayf.", which is a Yiddish word meaning "not kosher" - i.e., anything which doesn't meet Jewish dietary laws (pork, etc.). (00:50:00)

Trivia: In an early version of the script, Billy's mom was decapitated, the gremlins ate the family dog and Gizmo became Stripe.

Trivia: Key Luke actually had to wear old-age makeup to play Mr. Wing despite being about 80 years old at the time, as he looked significantly younger than he actually was. Zach Galligan once asked him how he maintained his looks at his age, and Luke simply replied "No fried food."

TedStixon

Trivia: When Billy is running to work with Barney at the beginning, you can't see it, but Barney actually has a piece of fishing line attached to his collar being held by Billy's actor. The dog kept running away when they'd shoot the scene, so they had to make an "invisible leash" for him. If you look, you can see the dog suddenly speed up a few times... that's because the line started pulling his collar.

TedStixon

Trivia: The dog who plays Barney, whose real name was "Mushroom," reportedly thought that the animatronic Gizmo was a real living animal and would treat it like another dog on-set.

TedStixon

Trivia: In the original script, Gizmo was meant to turn into Stripe. This idea was rejected as producer Steven Spielberg felt that the audience loved Gizmo so much they did not want to see him turn evil.

Trivia: The voice of Gizmo was done by actor Howie Mandel.

Trivia: If the town used in Gremlins looks familiar it's because the set was reused a year later in 1985 to film Back to the Future.

Trivia: At the inventors convention, in one scene you can see the time machine in the background, the film then cuts to Billy's mom. When it goes back to the convention, you can see the time machine is gone and people are looking for it.

TJ Brandt

Trivia: Director Joe Dante left his mark with a yellow smiling face sticker on Billy's fridge as a reference to The Howling, another Dante's film.

oswal13

Trivia: Mr. Wing's name is never spoken. Throughout the film, he is only called "Grandfather."

Trivia: This film debuted in theaters on the exact same day as Ghostbusters, another wildly popular and successful horror/comedy.

Trivia: Reportedly, director Joe Dante attended an early test screening and was waiting outside the theater to see what the audience reaction was. Midway through, an angry mother pulling her young daughter behind her barged out of the theater and began to scream at him. The mother felt the film was too violent for children and thought it had frightened her daughter, and chewed Dante out for several minutes. After she was finished yelling at him, she realized that her daughter had gone missing. It was only after the movie was over that she and Dante discovered that the young daughter was actually enthralled by the film, and had snuck back in the theater while he mother confronted Dante, hiding beneath some seats so she could watch the rest of the movie. Dante found the mother's over-reaction so amusing, he included a brief reference to it in the sequel, during the "Hulk Hogan" scene.