!!The film:
* ActorSharedBackground: Thornton Melon was a truck driver and an acrobatic diver in his younger days, as was Creator/RodneyDangerfield himself.
* TheCastShowoff:
** Music/DannyElfman's band Music/OingoBoingo shows up at Thornton's kickass dorm party. As Elfman wrote the film's score, this also qualifies as a CreatorCameo.
** Creator/RodneyDangerfield was, surprisingly, an acrobatic diver in his youth and performed part of the "Triple Lindy" himself, though the sequence is obviously helped by special effects.
* CastTheExpert: The divers were expert college divers. Director Alan Metter asked them to "do their worst" to play the Grand Lakes diving team.
* {{Corpsing}}:
** He's facing away from us, but Rodney is pretty clearly losing it in the scene where Creator/SamKinison screams at him about the Korean War.
** Creator/KeithGordon is clearly cracking up as Thornton's meek secretary types out notes during a lecture because he found Edie [=McClurg=]'s MinnesotaNice performance too hilarious.
* CutSong: Music/AliceCooper's song "The Great American Success Story" (on the album "Constrictor") was apparently intended to be the theme song. Its lyrics summarize the plot, and include "he don't get no respect", and the chorus leads off with the phrase "back to school". The song was not used in the film, and there is no mention of the connection in the liner notes of the album.
* FakeNationality: The very obviously Ashkenazi Jewish Creator/RodneyDangerfield (born Jacob Cohen) plays the Italian-American Thornton Meloni.
* HeyItsThatPlace:
** Diane's house is the same as used for the Doyle house where Laurie Strode babysat in ''Film/Halloween1978''.
** The room in which Thornton Melon takes his three-hour oral exam is the same room in which Alex Owens makes her successful dance audition in ''Film/{{Flashdance}}''.
* HeyItsThatSound: The sound made by the sound board when Derek starts experimenting with it at the dorm party is the same sound made by the proton packs in ''Film/Ghostbusters1984'', which was also co-written by Creator/HaroldRamis.
* ThrowItIn:
** Jason laughing at his dad's secretary is because the actor couldn't stop cracking up at Edie [=McClurg=].
** During the scene with Creator/SamKinison, when he throws the desk, Creator/RodneyDangerfield is trying really hard not to laugh. You can't see his face during it but his head is very much bobbing.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** Creator/JimCarrey was originally considered for the angry history professor, but was decided against for being too young at the time. Creator/BobSaget was also considered for the same role, but they felt his humor wasn't abrasive enough.
** In the original script, the Melon family was rather poor. Creator/HaroldRamis, who was hired to rewrite, suggested that they should be rich instead to make scenarios funnier.
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