Trivia / Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

• Acclaimed Flop: It’s the best reviewed entry by critics in the series at the time who praised the film for its self aware, meta angle and a good parody of both the franchise and the slasher genre as a whole. It was also the first film to make less money than its predecessors (albeit still very profitable overall, thanks to its low budget), slowly starting the diminishing box office returns.
• B-Team Sequel: Danny Steinmann, the director of Part V, was nearly re-hired to direct this film, with Tom McLoughlin only initially being hired as writer. However, the producer persuaded Paramount to let McLoughlin also direct, and Steinmann was quite happy to move onto a planned sequel to The Last House on the Left that he was trying to get off the ground, but ultimately went nowhere.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Series composer Harry Manfredini and producer Frank Mancuso Jr. have both cited this as their favorite of the Friday the 13th series. Manfredini in particular considers his music here as the best he’s composed in the series.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The teaser trailer featured a scene of Jason's tombstone breaking after being struck by lightning. While not in this film, it was used in the Previously on… segment in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.
• On-Set Injury: Nancy McLoughlin twice. When Jason smashes the car's windshield, the fence post unexpectedly changed its trajectory towards the passenger's seat where Nancy was at the time and came very close to impaling her. Then when it came to shot Lizbeth's death scene, it was revealed that the tube to give her oxygen was filled with mud and she had to hold her breath for the duration of the scene due to tight scheduling.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Thom Matthews replaces John Shepherd as the adult Tommy Jarvis from the previous film.
  • C.J. Graham takes over as Jason, after Tom Morga played him in the prior film’s hallucinations and Ted White played him the last time he physically appeared.
• The Other Marty: Dan Bradley, the stunt coordinator originally cast as Jason. Paramount higher-ups felt he was too bulky when they saw the first day's rushes and replaced him with the enormous C.J. Graham. Since the character wears a mask throughout the entire film, the scenes that Dan Bradley shot were not redone and some of his footage remains in the film, as he plays Jason during the paint balling sequence. If you look closely, you can tell it’s a different actor during the sequence as Dan Bradley is considerably shorter than C.J. Graham. This is also why Jason's eye color changes during the film.
• Promoted Fanboy: C.J. Graham, the actor who plays Jason in this film, actually played Jason in a dine-in theatre show that he owned when he was spotted by the film's producers.
• What Could Have Been: There were some story developments that didn't make the final cut of the film. One of them becoming quite infamous, you can check them out here.
• Word of God: Tom McLoughlin has confirmed that Nancy, the little girl having nightmares was not a Shout-Out to the same Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but was rather named after his wife Nancy McLoughlin.

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