36 Random Bits of Classic Movie and TV Trivia Available on Blu-ray, DVD, VHS and Betamax

You might need one of those mom-and-pop electronic shops to digitize these for you
36 Random Bits of Classic Movie and TV Trivia Available on Blu-ray, DVD, VHS and Betamax

We found this old Rubbermaid bin of facts in our parents’ basement, and although their individual boxes and cases are bringing us all kinds of warm nostalgia, we’re not exactly sure what to do with them. We don’t have a VHS or DVD player to play them at our house, but we don’t want to see them in the trash either! They brought us so many great memories. 

Here, you take them. Please. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them as much as we did!

Spaceballs

Meta Movies Spaceballs Nobody liked the costumes. John Candy was frustrated he couldn't move Barf's ears and tail himself, and had to rely on puppeteers. Yogurt' makeup gave Mel Brooks a severe allergic reaction. And Pizza the Hutt's costume included actual melted cheese, which gave the actor serious burns. CRACKED.COM

Star Wars

The trash in the trash compactor scene was definitely authentic. The smell was so bad Mark Hamill burst a blood vessel in his face, holding his breath. The camera work had to be adjusted for the rest of the scene, to avoid capturing it on film. CRACKED.COM http://www.msn.com/en-au/entertainment/movies/

Children of the Corn III

EMBARRASSING EARLY APPEARANCES CHARLIZE THERON in Children of the Corn III Theron appears (uncredited) in 1995 as a cult follower in the B-tier horror franchise inspired by Stephen King. Nowadays, Theron has rather focused her interest in action movies, even appearing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. CRACKED.COM

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

CRACKED ВЕВОР AND ROCKSTEADY WERE CREATED SOLELY FOR TOY SALES. They didn't appear in the live action movies, but were created by Peter Laird as more characters for the cartoon's toy line. They weren't given much personality or backstory, just Shredder's henchmen for the Turtles to beat every time. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

Michael Kahn

Michael Kahn has been editing Steven Spielberg's movies for forty years. Kahn started working with the famous director on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and has edited almost all of his films since. Spielberg's most memorable, thrilling, and suspenseful scenes wouldn't have been possible without him. CRACKED.COM

John Hughes

EASTER EGGS IN '80S MOVIES The Breakfast Club ILUNOIS EMC 2 JOHN HUGHES LEFT EASTER EGGS ON LICENSE PLATES. Nerd Brian's plate is EMC 2 because E=MC². And all the individual plate numbers on Jake Ryan's car add up to 16. - 21850 KORNAK 16 Candles CRACKED.COM

Plan 9 From Outer Space

Plan 9 From Outer Space was actually financed by a Baptist church. The legendarily schlocky 50s sci-fi movie was an attempt by the Baptist Church of Beverly Hills to make money to fund religious movies. It failed. CRACKED.COM

Jaws

MOVIES SAVED BY RESHOOTS JAWS FROM LAUGHS TO SCREAMS. After audiences laughed at the cheap-looking shark, Steven Spielberg took a less is more approach to build suspense, and added character beats that spoke about how scary the shark is. You know what they say: Tell, don't show. CRACKED

Melrose Place

Melrose Place CRACKED.COM This was actually the 1st of five spinoffs from Beverly Hills, 90210. Its first season kept the episodic format, where everything wrapped up neatly at the end of the day. They rocketed to success when they started experimenting with the ongoing soap opera saga format.

Happy Days

Happy Days RONNY-HOWARD CRACKED.COM The Happy Days crew started out on an episode of Love, American Style, which was basically an anthology of unconnected rom-com pilots. Their episode was meant to be a pilot for an entirely different show that was never picked up. Two years later, the characters and settings were yoinked for Happy Days.

Xena: Warrior Princess

Xena: Warrior Princess CRACKED.COM Xena was supposed to be killed off after a three-episode arc on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, but was so popular she got a six-season starring role instead.

NCIS

NCIS CRACKED.COM The source of several spinoffs is, itself, a spinoff of JAG. Four main castmembers from JAG went on to appear in various NCIS...es.

The Andy Griffith Show

The Andy Griffith Show CRACKED.COM The world was introduced to Andy Griffith in an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. Thomas takes time off from being a good comedian and terrible father to get arrested in the small town of Mayberry.

Family Matters

Family Matters CRACKED.COM Long before Urkel stole the show, the spotlight was supposed to be on Harriette Winslow. She was a breakout success on Perfect Strangers, where she played a sassy elevator operator whose cop husband used to drop by from time to time. In this scene, she delivers the line: excuse me baby, this is a family matter, and you're in the line of fire.

Beavis and Butt-Head

Beavis And Butt-Head CRACKED.COM The boys got their first taste of televised idiocy with a series of shorts on MTV's Liquid Television, a collection of animations from indie producers. Their first short is about them brutally murdering increasingly larger defenseless animals.

Friday

ice cube chris tucker - NOT can go down Getween thuroday - saturday... South Central inspired Ice Cube to write Friday because he didn't like the portrayal of the hood as violent and unsafe to live in. friday RUM new WARUBA accident N HAT ON The adidas adidas adidas adidas TREH S COCK SPOCT Y Which unlike in the movie, from their experience was fun. check besope any NEW ranke with - TUMBER 10% taken SOUTH CENTRAL KID - adidas HOND DE TRANS el 100m = MEDE PER RD 200 CRACKED.COM R = THE MENCENT - - |

Gremlins

GREMLINS Director Joe Dante pored over Frank Capra S iconic It's A Wonderful Life and decided that it was the exact spirit he wanted for Gremlins; a heartwarming, magical, small town, Christmas journey, with horrible green monsters.

007

James Bond's 007 came - from a bus. After author lan Fleming moved to Kent in the 1950s, he would often travel back to London by bus - specifically, the 007 bus. It still runs today, and is very popular with Bond fans. CRACKED.COM

Star Wars

Yoda was partly based on Stuart Freeborn, the guy that brought him to life. Freeborn was a Hollywood makeup artist who had worked on the Star Wars franchise and had helped design Yoda, basing him on himself and Einstein. CRACKED.COM

E.T.

Pop culture inspirations E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Steven Spielberg's childhood experiences and filming the climactic scene of Close Encounters of the Third Kind inspired him to incorporate a divorce theme into E.T., which explores a family trying to fill a big void after a divorce. CRACKED

The Shining

Pop culture inspirations The Shining Stanley Kubrick was inspired by A DIANE ARBUS PHOTOGRAPH to cast the Grady sisters as twins. The original book by Stephen King does not feature twins. CRACKED

Cape Fear

Classic Hollywood Movies Original vs. Remake 1962 Cape Fear Martin Scorsese's brutal, twisted, and awesome version honors the (also awesome) original, and even features cameos by its two actors, Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, alongside Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte. Watch both back-to-back, and enjoy. 1991 CRACKED.COM

Born Yesterday

Classic Hollywood Movies Original vs. Remake 1950 Born Yesterday This classic rom-com with Judy Holiday tells the story of an uneducated woman whose pig of a boyfriend gets her an educated man to, erm, educate her. The remake with Melanie Griffith, John Goodman and Don Johnson wasn't nearly as good, but we still think this dangerous concept still has some steam in it. 1993 CRACKED.COM

The Shawshank Redemption

CRACKED.COM 302 THE TITLE FOR THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION WAS TOO MUCH OF A MOUTHFUL. Despite being one of the most beloved prison movies (or even just movies) of all time, audiences gave it a hard pass when it came out in 1994. Both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman have claimed (perhaps with a wink) that it failed because no one could remember the name Shawshank.

Monty Python

GRAGKED.COM MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS WAS KIND OF AN ACQUIRED TASTE. The show had dismal ratings when it first aired in 1969 - it trailed behind literally every other light entertainment show on the BBC. Management wanted it gone, not just because of the low audience numbers, but because they found it in bad taste. Eventually, however, Monty Python's brand of humor grew on the British public.

Willy Wonka

CRACKED.COM WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY WASN'T GRITTY ENOUGH. The 1970s were the time of the New Hollywood, when dark movies like Dirty Harry, The Godfather, or Taxi Driver were huge hits. In this backdrop, lighter stuff fell by the wayside, and Willy Wonka barely managed to break even.

The Muppets

Muppets started the trend of post-credits scenes. 1979's The Muppets Movie kickstarted the trend in the '80s, which Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a part of f-- and Ferris inspired the post-credits scenes in the MCU. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Elf

Jim Carrey almost played the lead. Carrey was initially attached to star in the movie, but the script took 10 years to finally go into production, and by that time he wasn't interested anymore. CRACKED COM

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The studio wanted eyeballs on Jack. Some people at Disney suggested he should have eyeballs, but Selick and Burton just ignored them. Selick says, We were never going to do that. CRACKED.COM

Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown's dinky little tree comes from a fairy tale. Producer Lee Mendelson suggested the idea of decorating a scrawny, ugly tree because he'd read Hans Christian Andersen's The Pine Tree, and that was on his mind. CRACKED.COM

A Christmas Story

It took Bob Clark 12 years to get the movie made. A period movie about a kid wanting a BB gun for Christmas? Hard pass, studios kept saying. MGM reluctantly agreed to pony up the money if Clark signed up to direct another movie for them. 8 CRACKED.COM

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

MARILYN MONROE COULD HAVE STARRED IN CRACKED.COM BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Truman Capote's novel had a more tragic tone than the Paramount production, and the author always pictured the character of Holly as a blonde. However, producers chose to put a more positive, innocent spin on the role, and chose Audrey Hepburn. And just like that, the world missed out on a breathy, sultry rendition of Moon River.

The Matrix

SANDRA BULLOCK TURNED DOWN THE ROLE OF NEO. CRACKED.COM DE I I RHOM BEY MBY The producers of The Matrix approached a number of actors in their long search to find Neo. One of them was Bullock, and they were willing to change Neo into a woman if she accepted. Bullock wasn't interested, deciding that starring in Forces of Nature, a now-forgotten romcom, was a better career choice.

The X-Files

PAMELA ANDERSON COULD HAVE BEEN AGENT SCULLY. CRACKED.COM FBI Gillian Anderson revealed in an interview that Pamela Anderson (no relation) was the producers' initial choice for the skeptical Dana Scully. Apparently the producers were banking on Pamela's experience and Baywatch popularity. Can aliens run in slow motion? We'll never know.

Three’s Company

Suzanne Somers was fired from Three's Company for asking for equal pay. Her co-star John Ritter, was getting $150,000 an episode, so she asked to get that (and not the $30,000 she'd been getting). Instead, they fired her, saying that Ritter is the star. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Ghostbusters 2

Ghostbusters 2's fur coat gag was recycled. They were going to use the gag with the dead skins coming back to life in the first movie, but they just didn't get around to filming it. So they put it in the sequel. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

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