Trivia: The boardwalk scenes were filmed on location at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California.
Trivia: Kevin Peter Hall, who plays the Predator, also appears as the pilot of the general's helicopter at the end of the film.
Trivia: There are two different endings to this movie. In the first one (released on video and DVD in the US), the shark (inexplicably) explodes after being rammed by the boat and sinks to the bottom in a reuse of footage from "Jaws." When the camera cuts back to the survivors floating in the water, we see that Mario Van Peebles, though badly wounded, is alive after all. In the second ending (which can be seen on American Movie Classics in the US), Mario Van Peebles does not survive his fall off of the boat; when he falls, he lands in the shark's mouth and is killed. Also, when the boat rams into the shark, it does not explode but is more "realistically" impaled, blood pouring from its mouth as it dies. After the survivors are knocked off the boat, there is a shot of ship and shark sinking to the bottom, prow of the ship stuck in the side of the shark.
Trivia: Pinhead is not named in this movie, and is simply credited as lead Cenobite.
Trivia: Stan Winston's face was the model for the Wolfman.
Trivia: During Joey's nightmare, he is seduced by a topless nurse who then captures him before turning into Freddy. As originally conceived, only her face was going to transform at first, thus having Freddy's burnt male head on top of an otherwise perfect topless female body in order to create an eerie, otherworldly look. The actress portraying the nurse even took part in some test shots and performed the scene under heavy prosthetics to make her face look exactly like Freddy's. However, the effect was cut as the crew felt it looked far too weird, and that it diminished the moment when Freddy fully appears on-camera in the scene.
Trivia: When Ash is possessed of the evil presence and beats up the girl, he throws her on the couch and chuckles evilly (or hornily, same dif). He is stopped from committing further molestation by the sight of that ugly piece of jewelry that he gave to Linda earlier. When the necklace gets a closeup, the chain forms the outline of a skull.
Trivia: When Caleb attempts to leave the gang for the first time, just as he gets to the bus station you can see a cinema behind him that is playing Aliens (1986). Near Dark was released a year after Aliens and it shares most of the same cast. The director of Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow, was also married to Aliens director James Cameron at the time. (00:22:28)