Trivia: When the movie was first shown in theaters, the marquee read, "From the director of Animal House...A Different Kind of Animal." This lead many movie patrons to believe that it was another comedy film. People ran out of theaters in terror when they realised it was a horror movie.
Trivia: While giving a lecture at the Hollywood Scriptwriting Institute, director Joe Dante trash talked the novel "The Howling" on which the movie is based. One person in the audience raised his hand and asked, "So, you don't like the book, huh?" with Joe stating, "No, not really." The man responded that he was the one who wrote the novel. To Joe's surprise, the man in the audience was Gray Brandner, the author of "The Howling."
Trivia: Part of the reason Alice (the survivor of the first film) is only on screen during the first scene and is killed off early is because the actress portraying her (Adrienne King) was dealing with a real-life stalker and was trying to limit her acting appearances.
Trivia: When they are preparing and listening to the tape you can see a bit of smoke in the air. There had been an extended scene where they had been smoking pot and joking around. However, they used real pot when filming and much of what was shot ended up being unusable as a result. This is according to Bruce Campbell's Commentary to the DVD.
Trivia: Because of Carole Bouquet's sinus problems, the close-up underwater shots of Bond and Melina were shot in an entirely dry studio and not underwater. They were shot at a higher frame rate with wind machines. Derek Meddings, the special effects man, added the bubbles in afterwards.
Trivia: Jimmy didn't die even though it never shows him after he faints on the steering wheel in the car with Lori. He simply passed out. The television cut shows him alive in the ambulance at the end, but for some reason in the theatrical version, they left it out for us to 'wonder'.
Trivia: Teddy Lewis tells Ned that "Matty" had him show her how to rig up a explosive with a delay to a door. So in theory Matty could have opened the door and escaped unscathed.
Trivia: Throughout the film there are several references to a character named Horseflesh, (such as "Horseflesh would never get us into this mess"). Despite the character being credited at the end of the movie he's never properly shown onscreen. There's a paragraph devoted to him in the published "Time Bandits" screenplay: "The trouble is quite frankly that if Horseflesh had been in it he would have made seven dwarves, and we'd have libel suits from Disney and all sorts of things. But we liked the name, so he remains the mystery dwarf." According to the interview with Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam on the extras DVD (produced in 2002), Terry Gilliam states that Horseflesh is the dwarf seen with Evil, though it isn't mentioned who he is; in the original script he had quite a few lines, but they were cut, eg "The map! Evil one, the very map I promised you, is yours" (from script excerpt shown on DVD).
Trivia: Scanners is identified as having the first known media depiction of psychic activity directly or indirectly causing nosebleed. This concept has since become widespread in movies, television, and comic books/graphic novels.
