History Trivia / TheBluesBrothers

** The corrections officer is [[TheMuppets a Muppet]]. In fact, he's [[FrankOz about half of them]]. And [[StarWars non-[=CGI=] Yoda]]
** The mystery woman who has it in for Jake is [[StarWars Princess Leia]].

* AllStarCast: Bit parts for the likes of Music/RayCharles, JohnCandy, Music/ArethaFranklin, Creator/CarrieFisher, Music/JamesBrown, Music/CabCalloway, and HenryGibson, plus cameos by Creator/StevenSpielberg, FrankOz, and Twiggy. PaulReubens also appears, [[RetroactiveRecognition pre-"Pee-Wee Herman" fame]], [[TheEagles Joe Walsh]] has a small cameo as a prisoner at the end of the film, and one of the dancers outside Ray's Music Emporium was James Avery, who would later play Uncle Phil in ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'', in his first screen appearance.
** Downplayed when it comes to the members of the Blues Brothers band. All the members are very well-known in the music industry and pretty much everyone in the world has come into contact with their work in some way, but if you hadn't seen the film you'd have no idea what they looked like. For example, Tom "Bones" Malone has worked as a sound technician, a composer, a studio musician and a producer. His resume has over 200 musicians and bands on it, including {{Aerosmith}}, Diana Ross, FiftyCent, and FrankZappa, and the rest of the band has similar-looking resumes.

** Downplayed when it comes to the members of the Blues Brothers band. All the members are very well-known in the music industry and pretty much everyone in the world has come into contact with their work in some way, but if you hadn't seen the film you'd have no idea what they looked like. For example, Tom "Bones" Malone has worked as a sound technician, a composer, a studio musician and a producer. His resume has over 200 musicians and bands on it, including {{Aerosmith}}, [[TheSupremes DianaRoss]], FiftyCent, and FrankZappa, and the rest of the band has similar-looking resumes.

** Downplayed when it comes to the members of the Blues Brothers band. All the members are very well-known in the music industry and pretty much everyone in the world has come into contact with their work in some way, but if you hadn't seen the film you'd have no idea what they looked like. For example, Tom "Bones" Malone has worked as a sound technician, a composer, a studio musician and a producer. His resume has over 200 musicians and bands on it, including {{Aerosmith}}, DianaRoss, FiftyCent, and FrankZappa, and the rest of the band has similar-looking resumes.

* HeyItsThatGuy: The first Blues Brothers reveled in this with a bunch of celebrity cameos, though also featured more than its share of people who would become better-known later.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Aykroyd's original script is said to have been phonebook-sized and included special recruitment scenes for each band member. Considering the size of the band, this could have elevated things to unfeasibly epic proportions.
** These scenes and many others cut from the original script are in the novelization of the film.

* CreatorKiller: The failure of ''Blues Brothers 2000'' effectively ended the directorial career of JohnLandis.

** The clerk at the assessor's office is [[StevenSpielberg better known for his time behind the camera]].

** And then things went to hell. Belushi went everywhere in Chicago when he wasn't on set—and when he did, ''everybody'' was slipping him vials and packets of coke. That was in addition to what he could procure, or have procured for, himself, often consumed in his trailer or at the private bar on set he had built for himself, his longtime friends, the cast and any visiting celebrities. Carrie Fisher, who Landis had warned to keep Belushi away from drugs if she could, said almost everyone who had a job there also dealt, and the patrons could (and did) score almost anything there. DanAykroyd, who unlike Belushi or Fisher kept his use under control, says there was money in the budget set aside for coke for night shoots.

** The corrections officer is [[TheMuppets a Muppet]]. In fact, he's [[FrankOz about half of them]].

* ProductPlacement: An extremely subtle one: John Candy's line asking for an Orange Whip. While also a cocktail,[[note]]One ounce rum, one ounce vodka, four ounces orange juice and two ounces cream, shaken, served over ice[[/note]] Orange Whip provided refreshments for the crew, and the costumer, Sue Dugan, was daughter of the director of sales for Orange Whip, Kenny Dugan, who asked the company be mentioned in the film.

** Universal won a close bidding war with Paramount for the project, and of course they were overjoyed to have JohnBelushi, coming off a year when he'd starred in both a top-grossing film and a top-rate TV show ''and'' had a number one single. But they didn't have a script. After an experience writing partner was unable to help him, Aykroyd, who'd never even ''read'' a movie screenplay before, much less written one, took his time writing it. He delivered a 324-page monstrosity formatted more like free verse. Landis spent two weeks just cutting it down and converting it to something filmable.

* The mall chase scene took place at Dixie Square Mall, a shopping mall in the Chicago suburb of Harvey that had already gone out of business in 1979 due to excessively high crime. The filmmakers set up fake storefronts within half of the mall (for instance, the Toys "R" Us seen in the film was actually a Walgreens). After filming finished, the building was left abandoned for ''thirty'' years before finally being demolished in 2012.

** The aggravated diner has [[KnightRider a voice more familiar than his face]], or you might know him from [[StElsewhere elsewhere]].

** The production returned to Los Angeles for the last month of shooting, already way behind schedule and over budget. Fortunately Belushi calmed down and got it done. But right before shooting the final scene, which required him to do all sorts of onstage acrobatics while performing at the LA Palladium in front of an audience of hundreds of extras, he tried out some kid's skateboard...and fell off and seriously injured his knee. Lewis Wasserman, president and CEO of MCA, Universal's then parent company, called the top orthopedist in LA and made him postpone his weekend until he could shoot Belushi up with enough anesthetics to get him through filming

** The production returned to Los Angeles for the last month of shooting, already way behind schedule and over budget. Fortunately Belushi calmed down and got it done. But right before shooting the final scene, which required him to do all sorts of onstage acrobatics while performing at the LA Palladium in front of an audience of hundreds of extras, he tried out some kid's skateboard...and fell off and seriously injured his knee. Lew Wasserman, president and CEO of MCA, Universal's then parent company, called the top orthopedist in LA and made him postpone his weekend until he could shoot Belushi up with enough anesthetics to get him through filming

** The production returned to Los Angeles for the last month of shooting, already way behind schedule and over budget. Fortunately Belushi calmed down and got it done. But right before shooting the final scene, which required him to do all sorts of onstage acrobatics while performing at the LA Palladium in front of an audience of hundreds of extras, he tried out some kid's skateboard...and fell off and seriously injured his knee. Lew Wasserman, the studio head, called the top orthopedist in LA and made him postpone his weekend until he could shoot Belushi up with enough anesthetics to get him through filming

** The script was finished but the studio and the creative people hadn't settled on a budget. After the first month of filming in Chicago, where Landis kept Belushi under control and things went well, they finally saw it. "I think we've spent that much already," Landis half-joked when he saw that it was $17.5 million.

* WordOfGod: The novel, which is based on the original screenplay (which bares only a slight resemblence to the final version), expands on some points, such as what Elwood was doing between Jake getting locked up and the beginning of the film (he worked in a aerosol can factory as a maintenence guy, which is how he got that glue can. In a deleted scene, in fact, he is shown working at the factory on the assembly line, before going to his boss's office to tell him that he's quitting to become a preacher).