Trivia / The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Despite hating the final product and having a case of Money, Dear Boy noted below, Dennis Hopper did note he also took the part of Lefty due to his character singing "Bringing in the Sheaves."
• Banned in China:
  • A release in West Germany in 1986 was not possible because the film was banned before the film could be released to theaters. In 2012 Turbine Medien acquired the rights to the film and started work on getting the banishment revoked. It took them four years until the local court of Berlin-Tiergarten finally lifted the banishment.
  • In Australia, Hoyts Distribution submitted the film for classification in 1986, but was considered 'highly offensive' and effectively banned for 20 Years, although an unofficial illegal VHS release did appear at retailers in 2000.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $4.5 million. Box office: $8 million. (Its box office prospects may well have been hampered by opening just a week after The Fly (1986), a major studio horror film that was both a critical success and notoriously gruesome.)
• Channel Hop: The film was released by The Cannon Group. Along with the rest of the Cannon library, it's currently owned by MGM, except for the broadcast/streaming rights, which are held by Paramount, and home video, which were handled by 20th Century Fox until the Disney buyout led to Warner Bros. taking the mantle. Shout! Factory licensed the film for a Blu-ray in 2016 with Vinegar Syndrome licensing it for a 4K release in 2022.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In a contemporary interview, Dennis Hopper claimed he viewed the film as a joke compared to his Career Resurrection role in Blue Velvet that came out the same year. He claimed he was miscast as Lefty and only took on the role so he would be close to Willie Nelson's country club.
  • On the 2022 4K release, make up artists Gabe Bartalos and Bart Mixon noted they initially disliked the film on release, but eventually warmed up to it over the years.
  • Caroline Williams had reservations over the infamous chainsaw humping scene, but has now embraced it alongside the rest of the film.
• Creator's Favorite: Bill Moseley has said that his role as Chop-Top is his favorite of his own.
• Deleted Role: Joe Bob Briggs had a deleted cameo as a victim.
• Deleted Scene: Several scenes were deleted by Tobe Hooper due to pacing issues. Two scenes were present on homed media releases.
  • One lengthy scene that was cut from the film involves the Sawyer Clan heading out at night to collect prime meat for their chili by slaughtering movie patrons and a group of rowdy, rioting fans. The deleted slaughtering scene featured several elaborate Tom Savini special effects.
  • Another deleted scene also includes the American film critic Joe Bob Briggs complimenting Leatherface on his chainsaw skills before being killed.
  • A lost scene involved Lefty hallucinating chainsaws coming out of his hotel room walls.
• Executive Meddling: Cannon execs made an active effort to monitor the production and slashed the budget as a fallout from the failure of Hooper's Invaders from Mars (1986). They went as far as to select the second unit director with someone they wanted over Hooper's objections.
• Exiled from Continuity: According to Bill Moseley, the rights to Chop Top and the rest of this film's new characters are owned by Sony, thus barring them from use in other Texas Chainsaw Massacre installments. This is why Caroline Williams' cameo is the third film has her go unnamed, as the studio was legally barred from making her character be Stretch.
• Money, Dear Boy: Or vacation in this case. Dennis Hopper admitted he only took the role of Lefty so he could golf at his friend Willie Nelson's country club, which was close to filming in Austin.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Bill Johnson replaces Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface. Hansen was approached to reprise his role, but he claimed to have been offered "scale plus ten percent" with the ten percent going to his agent. When he replied that he had no agent, they offered scale without the additional ten percent. Hansen found the offer too low. Unit publicist Scott Holton offered an alternate story, claiming Hansen vacillated about the part and the offer was rescinded.
  • Ken Evert replaces John Dugan as Grandpa Sawyer/
• The Other Marty: While Bill Johnson is credited as Leatherface, only around 2% of the footage in the final film is his performance, with most of it centering on close-ups of his face. The majority of the final film contains footage by credited stunt double Bob Elmore, who was given an acting contract after Johnson proved unable to lift the chainsaw the way Hooper demanded with Tom Morga playing Leatherface in the bridge scene.
• Sequel Gap: The film came out twelve years after the original.
• Troubled Production: Thanks to Invaders from Mars (1986) having run behind schedule, this film bore the brunt of the fallout from that film's own troubled production. Tobe Hooper had to deal with a slashed budget that resulted in numerous scenes being excised and constant supervision from Cannon execs. The monitoring went to the extent that they picked the second unit director, which resulted in a confrontation with a very frustrated Hooper. Not helping matters was that the film was being filmed in an ill-equipped studio during the middle of a record-breaking heat wave in Texas, resulting in Bill Johnson passing out from dehydration and side lined for a week of filming.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel originally had an idea for a sequel that would feature an entire town of cannibals, and also be a satire of the film Motel Hell, which itself was a satire of the original film. The title of that sequel was to be Beyond The Valley Of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the studio forced considerable changes to be made to the screenplay, even hiring a new screenwriter.
  • In the original screenplay, Stretch was going to be Lefty Enright's illegitimate daughter.

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