Trivia / Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

• Acting for Two: Mark Steger plays both Harold and the Pale Lady.
• The Cast Showoff: The Jangly Man’s scenes take every opportunity to show off contortionist Troy James’ impressive bodywork.
• Channel Hop: The film was produced by CBS Films and released by Lionsgate as part of a distribution deal. CBS Films became defunct after CBS and Viacom merged as ViacomCBS (later renamed Paramount Global), and the planned sequel is now set to be produced and distributed by Paramount.
• Crosscast Role:
  • The Big Toe creature is referred to as female, but is played by the male Javier Botet.
  • Mark Steger as the Pale Lady.
• Dueling Works: The film released about a month before It: Chapter Two, a film that involves a group of kids (and their grown selves) in a small town fending off a demonic force that uses your worst fears against you. The latter film has been more successful at the box office, though critical reception to Scary Stories has been more favorable.
• Line to God: The film's director, Andre Ovredal, is very amiable on his Twitter account and loves responding to fans.
• Promoted Fanboy: Troy James, who played the Jangly Man, loved the books as a kid.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Guillermo del Toro mentioned that one story that almost got adapted was the story "High Beams", a story about a woman who, while driving one night, is followed by a car that keeps flashing its headlights. She believes that this is someone out to get her, but when she arrives home, the driver of the car reveals that he was trying to warn her of someone hiding in her backseat.
  • In general, Guillermo Del Toro was originally supposed to direct the film but ended up passing directorial duties onto Andre Ovredal.
  • The Jangly Man was originally going to have six limbs to better represent the body parts of killed Vietnam soldiers, but it would have required a lot of extra digital effects and the crew wanted to minimize the amount of CG used. This factoid is interesting, as several articles written about the character before the film's release mentioned his extra limbs, making it a promotional article version of a Missing Trailer Scene.
  • Harold was originally designed with his book counterpart's noticeable potbelly, but the crew decided that it made him look too doughy and friendly. In addition, the hole made it less obvious that it was just a man in a suit.
  • The original screenplay is full of differences from the finished product:
    • Ruth and Tommy were named Alice and Kurt, with the police sheriff being the latter's father.
    • Stella's mother originally had died rather than left, with the "High Beams" story being utilized for the way in which she was killed. Stella's estrangement with her father was based around the belief that he had killed her, when in fact it was Sarah Bellows.
    • The book's chapters were all titled, leaving only the stories themselves to be written when it was time for someone to fall prey to Sarah's curse, as opposed to even the chapter titles needing to be written.
    • A zombie version of Sarah Bellows, using the catchphrase "You may be next", was used in place of the Big Toe creature, the Pale Lady and the Jangly Man.
    • The victims of "The Big Toe" and "The Dream" were switched - Chuck is killed in the former and Auggie in the latter. In addition, rather than being absorbed at the end of "The Dream", Auggie is electrocuted to death by hospital orderlies under Sarah's control.
    • Every victim is certifiably dead and remains as such. Even Ruth (Alice in the script) dies of spider venom on the way to the hospital.
    • The police sheriff is revealed to be the son of the hospital's director and in on the Bellows family's conspiracy. He's the one who pursues Ramon in the climax rather than the Jangly Man.
    • The Bellows House is destroyed by a demolition crew midway through the movie, but is supernaturally restored at the climax so that "The Haunted House" can transpire. After the curse is lifted, it collapses again, killing the evil sheriff in the process.
    • A twist ending that (rather contradictory to what was established before) suggests that Sarah was Evil All Along rather than just a victim, as her arms pop out of her grave to pull Stella in like the ending of Carrie.

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