- Black Sheep Hit: "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" from Agents of Fortune, which is a lot softer and more melodic than their usual style, became a fluky breakthrough hit for a band whose previous albums are full of weird, abrasive proto-metal songs. It's also one of their few songs to feature the cowbell.
- Creator Killer: Their fourteenth studio album Curse of the Hidden Mirror flopped so hard because of lackluster sales, negative reviews and poor relations that led to the band being dropped by their label, Sanctuary Records. They didn't record a studio album or hold a record deal until 2019, when the band announced a deal with Frontiers Music in July 2019, releasing a new studio album under that label in October 2020.
- Development Hell: Sandy Pearlman wrote the bulk of Imaginos before he even met the future members of BOC. It was initially to be released immediately after Secret Treaties, but it kept getting pushed back due to Creative Differences. After Albert Bouchard quit the band in 1982, he recorded it himself with the intent of releasing it as a solo album, but Columbia Records balked and insisted it be billed as a BOC album - leaving it in limbo for another six years until it was released with vocal overdubs from Buck and Eric and a massive number of session musicians billed as "The Guitar Orchestra of the State of Imaginos" - including two songs with lead vocals by non-members - one, the title track, featuring songwriter and future BOC bassist Jon Rogers, and another by Joe Cerisano, a session vocalist best known for recording KFC jingles and singing lead on "Hands Across America". And on top of all that, the published album had the tracks out of order. Bouchard would eventually release his own version of the album, under the name Re Imaginos, in 2020.
- Executive Meddling: The reason Imaginos was released in abridged format (the band wanted to release at least two CDs' worth of material) and out of order. The internal chronology of the tracks is not exactly clear, but one suggestion
is:1. Les Invisibles
2. Imaginos
3. Del Rio's Song
4. Blue Öyster Cult
5. Astronomy
6. I Am the One You Warned Me Of
7. In the Presence of Another World
8. The Siege and Investiture of Baron von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria
9. Magna of Illusion
- Misattributed Song: There's a strange misconception in some corners of the Internet, shared by a surprising number of lyrics archives, that the Blue Öyster Cult recorded "Ballroom Blitz". The fact that British glam-rockers the Sweet recorded this and had the hit single does not stop it being attributed to the BOC. Nor does the fact it was written by another songwriting team note Chinn and Chapman stop it being credited to Eric Bloom and Donald Roeser. OK, it sounds like something the BOC might have recorded or at least covered live - but they've never been anywhere near it. Consider the opening lyrics:
Are you ready, Steve? Aha.
Andy? Yeah! Mick? OK.
Alright, fellas, let's go!!
Strange for a band whose members are called Eric, Buck (actually Donald), Allen, Albert and Joe. Mick (Tucker), Andy (Scott) and Steve (Priest) are, in reality, the first names of the Sweet (not counting Brian Connolly, who is the one singing).
- Promoted Fanboy:
- In 1974, John Shirley wrote the novel Transmaniacon, deriving its title from a song on BOC's debut album. 20 years later, the band recruited him as their principal lyricist for "Heaven Forbid" and "Curse of the Hidden Mirror", as well as the band's two non-instrumental songs on the Bad Channels soundtrack album, released in 1992 ("Demon's Kiss" and "The Horsemen Arrive"). He appears yet again on their 2020 release, The Symbol Remains.
- The entire band counts as this, being fans of Michael Moorcock — and then collaborating with him on an album.
- Reclusive Artist: Album cover artist Bill Gawlik fell off the face of the earth between the release of Tyranny and Mutation and Secret Treaties, and no one associated with the band has kept in contact with him. The front and back covers of the band's first two albums are the only known artwork of Gawlik's to exist.
- What Could Have Been:
- They were originally pegged to write the entire soundtrack to Heavy Metal, but in the end only one was used, that being "Veteran Of The Psychic Wars." The other songs they'd written were later put on their own albums.
- As mentioned above, Imaginos was supposed to be a double album.
- Sandy Perlman assigned dynamic stage names to each individual band member, but Buck was the only one who kept his. In particular, Eric would have been "Jesse Python" and Albert would have been "Prince Omega".
