Trivia / Fear Street

The RL Stine Books

• Blooper: On page 113 of Missing, it says "I had to so something so stop my hand from bleeding''. This is fixed in the 2020 reprint. It also spells David Metcalf's name with an e at the end, which happens in at least one other book as well.
  • The New Year's Party gets Rick Schoor's last name wrong, spelling it as Shore. It also spells Bobby Newkirk as Bobby Newkick.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Stine has named Switched, The Face, and the Silent Night and Fear Street Saga trilogies as his favorites.
• Dummied Out: There's a preview for The Raven Woman, the last Sagas book that would've been made, in The Hand Of Power.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The last five Sagas books are unavailable on the Kindle, and paper copies are few and expensive (with copies ranging from $41 to $200). Some of the later Seniors books can be equally hard to get.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: A contest was held to let the fans decide what should happen in The Best Friend 2. Sara Graves (formerly Sara Bikman) was the winner, and in an interview she revealed she was the one who came up with Honey's reason for stalking Becka.
• Recycled Script: The books are formulaic by nature but there's a few examples that stand out:
  • The New Girl and The Perfect Date both revolve around a boy who becomes obsessed with a mysterious girl who might be dead.
  • Double Date and Sweetheart, Evil Heart are about a gross womanizer who tries to date more than one girl at once, only for one of them to possibly be evil. And in both cases, it turns out to all be a prank set up by girls he pissed off.
  • The big twist of both The Sleepwalker and The Face is that someone hypnotized the protagonist into forgetting the bad thing they did.
• What Could Have Been: Two more books in Fear Street Sagas, The Raven Woman and Carousel of Fear, were planned but never released. A preview of The Raven Woman was included in the last Sagas book.
  • Actually, the 18th book would've been called Carousel of Doom. Karen Chandler, the cover artist, posted the artwork on her website and can be found here.
  • Several of the books had cover artwork done back before the Fear Street titles switched publishers over to Gold Key. "The Stepbrother" was going to be the 52nd book in the main series while Escape of the He-Beast was solicited as the 28th of the Ghosts of Fear Street books. Instead, The Stepbrother became the first of the New Fear Street books.
  • According to Stine during his Masterclass, the series was originally going to be the same two characters but they felt it wouldn't be believable so instead they settled on having the same location tie the books together.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • Camp Nightwing from Lights Out is not to be confused with Count Nightwing.
  • (Or that other Nightwing for that matter.)
• Writer Revolt: The Thrill Club might be an example. It's the only book in the original series to be confirmed to be ghostwritten, and it happens to be about a girl who has her boyfriend Seth ghostwrite her stories for her. She expresses some guilt over doing this and in the end Seth turns out to be the killer, and part of his motivation is that she used him for things like that.

The 2021 Netflix Trilogy

• Acting for Two: A cast-wide example. The central cast of Part 1 and Part 2 are used to portray the early settlers of Shadyside and Sunnyvale in Part 3.
• Actor-Inspired Element: For 1978, Leigh Janiak gave all the actors a playlist of songs to help them get into the mindset of 70s youngsters. Ryan Simpkins however put together a playlist of their own, utilising more punk rock music, and modelling Alice off Joan Jett, David Bowie and Debbie Harry.
• Advertised Extra: Billy Barker, the Shadyside killer from 1922, is featured on the offical poster of 1978 and has a Netflix card promoting his appearance. In the end, he doesn’t show up at all apart from a few brief shots of him joining in on the ending when all the killers are resurrected to hunt the Berman sisters.
• Blooper:
  • Josh is seen using a computer with the Calibri font, despite the fact that the font wasn't introduced until 2007, a full 13 years after the film's setting.
  • While fighting off an attack in the supermarket, Kate gets her head shoved into a cake. The scene cuts to Sam and Deena, who hear her screaming from a distance. However, when the scene returns to Kate, she is still being held face down in the cake, which would have made it impossible to scream (at least as clearly and loudly as it happened).
• California Doubling: 1666 takes place in a settlement in 17th century Ohio before it became Sunnyvale and Shadyside. It was actually filmed in Georgia.
• Channel Hop: As detailed below, the trilogy was intended to kick off theatrically with a monthly schedule beginning in June 2020. However, after the COVID-19 Pandemic and the distributor change, the films were instead released one per week on Netflix from July 2nd to July 16th.
• Creator's Favourite: Sadie Sink, Darrell Britt-Gibson, and Gillian Jacobs have all said that they found the Milkman killer the scariest while on set. Benjamin Flores Jr.'s was Nightwing. And Ashley Zukerman found Nick Goode the scariest due to the fact he was aware of what he was doing.
• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: RL Stine loved the adaptation of his work, and gave his approval to the R-rating (the books had been PG).
• Dawson Casting:
  • Kiana Madeira was twenty-seven playing the high schooler Deena.
  • Fred Hechinger was twenty as Simon.
  • Heather from 1994 is implied to be a student too. Maya Hawke was twenty-two.
  • Alice from 1978 is borderline; she's a counselor so she's probably over eighteen, but not implied to be that old. Ryan Simpkins was twenty-three.
  • Jordana Spiro (44) plays Mary Lane in both 1994 and seventeen years earlier in 1978.
  • There are however aversions; Sadie Sink was eighteen playing Ziggy (who mentions that it's her last year at camp, implying she could be the same age), Benjamin Flores Jr was seventeen as Josh, and Julia Rehwald was eighteen as Kate. The former two do however appear to be playing this straight in 1666, since both Constance and Henry are referred to as "children" and treated as too young to get high or go dancing in the woods.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Olivia Scott Welch is normally blonde, but went brunette for Sam.
  • Emily Rudd was also a strawberry blonde who went auburn to play Cindy.
• Fake American: Kiana Madeira is Canadian, playing the American Deena.
• Fake Irish: Pretty much everyone in 1666 to play the early settlers in the 1600s. With varying degrees of success.
• Inspiration for the Work: Director Leigh Janiak has not been coy in how she looked to classic slasher films such as Friday the 13th and Scream in order to craft the first two entries, 1994 and 1978. She even hired original Scream composer Marco Beltrami to help craft the score for the trilogy.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The snake in 1978 kept ruining a couple of takes by looking directly at the camera.
• Playing Against Type: Gillian Jacobs, best known for portraying Large Ham Know-Nothing Know-It-All Britta Perry in Community, portrays a more subdued, smart and calm but traumatized survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre Christine "Ziggy" Berman.
• Production Posse: Maya Hawke, who plays Heather, and Sadie Sink, who plays Ziggy, both work on Stranger Things. Gillian Jacobs and Ryan Simpkins, who play C. Berman and Alice in Part 2 respectively, appeared in the drama film Gardens of the Night.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Per Word of Gay. Ryan Simpkins is non-binary, and while Alice's sexuality is never stated, they said that they played her as gay.
• Release Date Change: Initially scheduled for a monthly release beginning in June 2020, the trilogy was delayed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The entire release method changed when Chernin Entertainment, the production company, ended their deal with 20th Century Studios and turned to Netflix. Eventually, a July 2021 release date was confirmed, along with a weekly release schedule. This has seemed to work in the trilogy's favor as the weekly release has allowed for more discussion and less waiting time to wrap up the series.
• Shrug of God: For the final scene of Part 3, where a pair of hands grab the demonic book, the director Leigh Janiak said herself that the scene was meant to represent evil still plaguing Shadyside, saying that she wanted to keep the character themselves purposefully vague and ambiguous.
• Throw It In!: Leigh Janiak joked that she kept making the double murder of Cindy and Ziggy at the climax of 1978 Bloodier and Gorier based off the mood on set.
• Typecasting:
  • Maya Hawke plays a sassy teen who works in mall retail in 1994, just as she does in Stranger Things.
  • Another Stranger Things alumnus Sadie Sink likewise plays a non-conformist with an abrasive personality that stems from a troubled home life in 1978. In both, she's using a tomboyish nickname in place of a more feminine given name.
  • In both 1978 and Halloween (2018), Drew Scheid plays the bumbling comic relief who gets a surprise kill while trying to help the Final Girl.
• Wag the Director: Averted. The art department argued with director Leigh Janiak over whether or not a human head could go through a bread slicer, which she was very adamant about. To try and prove their point, they put a watermelon through only to find that it indeed worked. Reportedly, the production office burst into cheers when they got word.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was an attempt to make a Fear Street film in the late 90's, possibly being based on Scream, Jennifer, Scream!. It didn't get anywhere though.
  • This suggests that Sam was originally named Corky, likely a reference to the protagonist of the Cheerleaders series.
  • A Humpty Dumpty killer is seen in the opening credits of 1994. Leigh Janiak created a whole backstory for him - he was a killer that dismembered people and then sewed their body parts together to create "new people". Unable to work out which era he'd fit into, she cut him from the film and intends to use him in a later project.
  • 1978 was supposed to be directed by Alex Ross Perry, but he had to drop out due to last minute schedule conflicts. This meant that Leigh Janiak had to step in to direct this film as well.
  • Tommy was likewise supposed to get his sack mask much earlier in 1978. However, due to 1666 being filmed before that one, McCabe Slye portrayed Mad Thomas first. His performance impressed Leigh Janiak so much that she changed 1978 so that Tommy wouldn't get the mask put on until nearer the end, allowing his face to be seen for the majority of the story.
• Write What You Know: Director and co-writer Leigh Janiak spent her teenage years in Ohio, the state Shadyside is in. She used her experiences there to add to the character's dialogue for Part 1.
• Word of Gay: While it isn't confirmed in the film itself, both Ryan Simpkins and Leigh Janiak consider Alice from 1978 to be gay. Simpkins says they still played it that way even though it wasn't in the script directly. Simpkins and Emily Rudd also believe that Cindy was gay and had a crush on Alice.
• Word of God: According to the creative team, one of the kids in the Arts & Crafts cabin in 1978 is meant to be Kate's aunt who gets brutally murdered by Tommy.
• You Look Familiar: As detailed above in Acting for Two, several cast members from 1994 and 1978 portray settlement members of Union in 1666.

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