Costume Backlash: David Bowie felt, in retrospect, that his costume was inappropriate for the intended demographic. That said, the David Bowie Is touring museum exhibition that launched in 2013, featuring career-spanning memorabilia from his personal archive, includes several items from/related to this film.
Labyrinth was one of two attempts by now ex-Monty Python troupe veteran Terry Jones to write a screenplay (though most of it was rewritten without him). His next attempt after Labyrinth, Erik the Viking, impaled his cinematic screenplay career until 2015, one year before he started showing signs of dementia (he succumbed to it in 2020).
It was also the final feature film directed by Jim Henson. Labyrinth's failure caused Jim to spiral into a sort of depression (soothed somewhat by his return to television work, including The Storyteller). This gradual fall from grace led Henson to try to sell his Muppet characters to Disney before his death in 1990.
The Danza: Toby, played by illustrator/creature designer Brian Froud's son, Toby. Justified in that Toby was an infant at the time and consequently would only respond to his real name.
Development Hell: Not the film, but Archaia Entertainment's graphic novel prequel: announced in early 2012, initially pushed back to April 2013, then delayed indefinitely. The official explanation was that they didn't want it to go out until it was perfect, and considering that it's a backstory for Jareth — the most popular character in the fandom — one can understand the hesitancy, especially given the Broken Base caused by the last attempt at an Expanded Universe with Return to Labyrinth. (Archaia threw bones to the fandom in the meantime with stories about other characters, included in their Free Comic Book Day collections from 2012 onward.) It finally got released in 2018-19 under the name Labyrinth: Coronation.
Dueling Dubs: Labyrinth has no fewer than three Japanese dubs. In addition to the original dub, there was a second made for Fuji TV in 1988, and a third in 1992 for an NHK satellite channel.
Gates McFadden AKA Dr. Crusher did much of the choreography (however, she's credited by her real name, Cheryl McFadden). You can see her at work in some of the "making of" material.
Looping Lines: Most of the creatures' dialogue was re-recorded in post-production, with Kevin Clash, Brian Henson and Ron Mueck serving as both puppeteers and voice actors.
Never Work with Children or Animals: In a making-of special, Henson states that he'd been told never to work with children, animals or puppets. Labyrinth contains all three, and apparently it was quite a challenge getting everything to work out properly. Going by the special, the puppets were easiest to deal with (helped by the fact that those responsible for the puppets were neither children or animals, and highly experienced in their craft), followed by the baby, with the animals being the hardest, with the special showing Henson having trouble with the chickens in an early maze scene. The baby actually peed on Bowie's lap the first time they filmed a scene together and was originally supposed to be called Freddie, but baby Toby Froud would only respond to his own name.
No Export for You: The spinoff video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System was released only in Japan, and even then not until January 1987, six months after the movie's premiere there.
Brian Henson, Hoggle's performer, is the son of director Jim Henson.
Toby Froud, playing baby Toby, is the son of concept artist Brian Froud.
Referenced by...: Bryony Gordon is a British journalist with a particular interest in mental health issues. In one of her columns, she said that one of her therapists had told her that it might be helpful to give her OCD a name. She chose "Jareth the Goblin King."
Separated-at-Birth Casting: Baby Toby Froud really looks like Shelley Thompson, who plays his mother and Sarah's stepmother, sharing the same golden blond hair and big blue eyes, which probably stands to make Sarah feel even more like an outcast in her own family.
Screen-to-Stage Adaptation: Shepparton Kids in Theatre adapted it in 1999. As of 2022, the Henson company is working on another production.
Star-Derailing Role: Labyrinth helped put an unceremonious end to Bowie's acting career as a leading man. Combined with the failure of Absolute Beginners the same year and the general mess that was his 80s period, the sheer campiness of Bowie's role as Jareth made it difficult for people to take him as a serious actor any more. All his later acting stints were supporting roles (including some memorable cameos). The highest-profile project he worked on post-Labyrinth was the much-maligned "Atlantis SquarePantis" episode of Spongebob Squarepants.
Talent Double: Jareth spinning the crystal balls was actually done by a juggler, Michael Moschen, who had his arm in Jareth's sleeve instead of Bowie. He kept dropping the balls because he couldn't see what he was doing, and was in extremely awkward positions to make his arm look like Bowie's.
Throw It In!: The production budget and schedule were so tight that the puppeteers playing the goblins weren't given any stage directions other than "be goblins," so nearly all of their behavior is ad-libbed. Strangely enough, it works, giving the goblin scenes a weird chaotic nature that is very appropriate for them.
Jim Henson — The Biography reveals that the original conception of Jareth was simply as another special-effects creation, rather than someone to be played by a live actor.
Almost everything up until Sarah eating the peach was written by Terry Jones, with everything afterwards being rewritten by Henson and company before getting sent back to Jones for a final rewrite. This and other changes over the course of production resulted in quite a few alterations and omissions, some of which appeared in the tie-in books.
The Wiseman and his Hat were intended to wander in and out of the good guys' journey, dispensing occasionally useful, accidental advice.
The Fireys offered to help Sarah find the castle, but not only were they easily distracted, they didn't actually know what a castle was.
The Junk Lady (who was going to be revealed as a disguised Jareth) was part of a whole Junk City, complete with a bar where Hoggle went to drown his sorrows after his betrayal of Sarah.
The other door with a living knocker led to a Crapsaccharine World where no one could stop laughing; this became "The Laughing Forest" in the Japan-only Labyrinth game for the Famicom.
The issue of Sarah's parents' divorce was dealt with more directly in early drafts. The ring Sarah gave the Wise Man in the final film was originally a gift from her mother that she was much more reluctant to part with. The novelization also goes into detail on the glamourous fellow actor who became the mother's lovernote (seen only as a photo in the film, but importantly he's "played" by Bowie) — his name is Jeremy and he gave Sarah the music box.
Originally, Sarah's plot-launching mistake was opening the door to a stranger who claimed to be the writer of the school play she was due to star in; he turned out to be Jareth, who proceeded to kidnap Toby (then called Freddie) For the Evulz. Jareth was indeed a much less charismatic, more lecherous character in early drafts — in the climax, Sarah had to physically fight him off to rescue Toby, and defeated him by saying she wouldn't love him if he "were the last goblin on Earth!" This caused him to shrink into a whining goblin himself.
In the project's early stages, the story was set entirely in a Magical Land. Later, the Down the Rabbit Hole structure was introduced, with the "real world" setting being the Victorian era; this was subsequently changed to The Present Day. A big reason for the changes was the filmmakers becoming aware of a similar Fairy Tale film, Legend, which went into production around the same time — in fact, the two movies ultimately shared a cinematographer.
Before it went into Development Hell, the synopsis originally announced for the Archaia EntertainmentLabyrinth graphic novel prequel that eventually became Labyrinth: Coronation said it would be about Jareth as a young man attempting to rescue his true love from the malevolent Goblin Queen and ultimately failing and/or being trapped in some way into becoming the new Goblin King.
Working Title: Early titles Henson considered were The Labyrinth, The Maze, The Labyrinth Twist and The Tale of The Labyrinth.
The Miniseries:
Billing Displacement: John Hurt and Sebastian Stan are credited before Jessica Brown Findlay and Vanessa Kirby, even though the former have relatively small roles, and the latter are, you know, the leads.
