Trivia / Heavy Metal

• Approval of God: Richard Corben said the producers did a good job adapting his comics for the "Den" story, especially with John Candy playing the lead role.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: Journey's contribution to the soundtrack, Open Arms, ended up completely overtaking the film itself, staying at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks and becoming one of the band's signature hits.
• Breakout Character: Taarna became the symbol and flagship character of the film, and started becoming the title character in comic books, four decades after the film's release.
• Cut Song: Blue Öyster Cult wrote "Vengeance (The Pact)" for this movie but it was replaced with "Veteran Of The Psychic Wars" due to the former song's lyrics having major spoilers for Taarna. Both would be released in their 1981 studio album Fire of Unknown Origin.
• Follow the Leader: The Fifth Element borrows heavily from the Harry Canyon segment.
• Missing Trailer Scene: In the trailer, Taarna can be seen with a visible six pack, which she doesn't sport in the film. Likewise, the thug holding up Harry Canyon has a different voice.
• Playing Against Type: John Candy, known as a Big Fun comedian, is not the type you'd think would play the voice of a scrawy kid turned into the ultimate Mr. Fanservice in Neverwhere, but he had the acting skill to perfectly convey the teenage innocence of someone placed in a macho sexual fantasy.
• Recursive Adaptation:
  • Den started as an animated short before it was a comic.
  • Taarna is loosely based on a comic, Arzach drawn by Mœbius. Taarna got her own comic strip in Heavy Metal in 2018.
• Referenced by...:
  • The tabletop RPG Chalt has a Romulan NPC who's constantly high on nyborg.
  • One of the posters Jable's Fantasy-Forbidding Father rips off his bedroom wall in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny is a Heavy Metal poster.
  • The South Park episode "Major Boobage" homages the animated movie in the hallucination sequences of Kenny.
• Refitted for Sequel: Taarna's theme was written for Alex in Saturn 3, but not used.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The VHS had to be removed for years due to issues with licensing the music.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Elmer Bernstein reworked some of his Heavy Metal score as "Dana's Theme" from Ghostbusters (1984).
• Throw It In!: Notice in the Harry Canyon segment that the Girl's breasts seem to get bigger at one point? The animator apparently just got so bored doing that segment, he just made them bigger and thought no one would notice.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The plot was meant to be connected and more complex than an anthology, but due to the release date being bumped up and a rushed production, the animation had to be done by several animation houses, including CinéGroupe and Atkinson Film-Arts. Some of the abandoned ideas included Hanover Fiste showing up in "So Beautiful, So Dangerous," appearing on Zeke and Edsel's ship (saying "Sternn will go free!"); and a sequence linking Sternn and B-17 called "Neverwhereland," wherein the Loc-Nar lands on a planet and affects its development.
  • As shown in concept art, the B-17 segnent was to involve Gremlins rather than zombies. This ironically would have made the sequence more period accurate to the segment's setting.
  • Kyle Gass had revealed that the director of Kung Fu Panda had approached Tenacious D with an idea for a remake of Heavy Metal. The band was to appear in it as a duo of alien stoners, and they even composed the song "Deth Starr" for the film. Unfortunately, though, the idea never came to pass for fear that an R-rated cartoon would not sell well, so the band ended up releasing the song years later on their album Rize of the Fenix.
  • Along with Tenacious D, David Fincher was also planning to do a segment for the film with Tim Miller. That eventually spun off to Love, Death & Robots, 11 years later.
  • Love, Death & Robots itself began as a concept to revive Heavy Metal as an anthology TV series, after the theatrical sequel Heavy Metal 2000 flopped.

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