History Trivia / ETTheExtraTerrestrial

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** Creator/ShelleyLong was approached to play Elliott's mother. She turned it down as she was already signed on for the comedy ''Film/NightShift''.

** Creator/StanWinston turned down the opportunity to work on the film. He would regret doing so. Creator/RickBaker was also attached to the film when it was more horror-oriented, but was kicked off due to budget disputes. The final design used by Creator/CarloRombaldi is, per Baker's words, heavily based on his design for the alien.

** Creator/StanWinston turned down the opportunity to work on the film. He would regret doing so.

** A game for the UsefulNotes/Atari5200, which was said to be more generic but ''much'' more playable than the 2600 game, was in development and practically finished, but ultimately pulled due to the terrible reception of the 2600 game, and the 5200 itself not selling particularly well.

* GenreKiller: ''E.T'' is the mascot of the Great Crash of 1983, which not only reduced Atari to a shadow of its former self for the remainder of the 80s and 90s, but destroyed almost everyone else in the industry, and likely would have sent gaming into a permanent small niche or worse (at least in North America) had Nintendo not stepped up. It's also part of the reason some other Hollywood studios, most notably Creator/{{Disney}}, hesitated entering the gaming market and fumbled several times when they did, eventually exiting by closing down and/or selling their games divisions to other, better-established companies[[note]]Dreamworks established Dreamworks Interactive in 1995 before selling it to Creator/ElectronicArts in 2000; the studio is now operating as Ripple Effect Studios. 20th Century Fox had ''three'' attempts in the gaming market, first with Games of the Century in the early 80s, which closed after 1983-1984; second with Fox Interactive in 1993, which they divested to Creator/VivendiUniversalGames (who also consolidated Universal Interactive Studios into Vivendi Universal Games around the same time) in 2003, which in turn was brought by Creator/{{Activision}} in 2008; and third with [=FoxNext=] in 2017, which Disney acquired through the purchase of 21st Century Fox and afterwards sold it to Scopely as Disney did not want to enter the video game market, as they shut down the ill-performing Disney Interactive three years earlier. Disney has since opened up a new games division for its successor 20th Century Studios called 20th Century Games but it functions solely as a licensor of 20th Century Fox [=IPs=] like ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' and ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes''. Creator/UniversalPictures's then-parent company MCA purchased Creator/{{LJN}} in 1985, with that company entering the games market in 1987, before divesting it to Creator/{{Acclaim}} in 1990. Universal officially entered the games market with Universal Interactive Studios in 1994, but it was transferred away from Universal Pictures to Vivendi's own games division Havas Interactive (which included Creator/{{Sierra}}) following Vivendi's acquisition of Seagram's entertainment assets in 2000, eventually being reduced to a publishing label for for ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot'', ''/Franchise/SpyroTheDragon'' and Universal [=IPs=] before consolidated into Vivendi Universal Games in 2004. Warner Communications still held a stake onto Atari's successor Atari Games but would fully own the company in 1993 via Time Warner Interactive before selling the company to WMS Industries, who then merged its assets into Creator/MidwayGames. Midway would eventually be brought out by Creator/WarnerBrosInteractiveEntertainment (who re-entered the games market in 2004) in 2009.[[/note]] The sole exception is, ironically enough, Warner Bros with Creator/WarnerBrosInteractiveEntertainment but much of its growth came from buying Creator/MidwayGames in 2009.

* GenreKiller: ''E.T'' is the mascot of the Great Crash of 1983, which not only reduced Atari to a shadow of its former self for the remainder of the 80s and 90s, but destroyed almost everyone else in the industry, and likely would have sent gaming into a permanent small niche or worse (at least in North America) had Nintendo not stepped up. It's also part of the reason some other Hollywood studios, most notably Creator/{{Disney}}, hesitated entering the gaming market and fumbled several times when they did, eventually exiting by closing down and/or selling their games divisions to other, better-established companies[[note]]Dreamworks established Dreamworks Interactive in 1995 before selling it to Creator/ElectronicArts in 2000; the studio is now operating as Ripple Effect Studios. 20th Century Fox had ''three'' attempts in the gaming market, first with Games of the Century in the early 80s, which closed after 1983-1984; second with Fox Interactive in 1993, which they divested to Creator/VivendiUniversalGames (who also consolidated Universal Interactive Studios into Vivendi Universal Games around the same time) in 2003, which in turn was brought by Creator/{{Activision}} in 2008; and third with [=FoxNext=] in 2017, which Disney acquired through the purchase of 21st Century Fox and afterwards sold it to Scopely as Disney did not want to enter the video game market, as they shut down the ill-performing Disney Interactive three years earlier. Disney has since opened up a new games division for its successor 20th Century Studios called 20th Century Games but it functions solely as a licensor of 20th Century Fox [=IPs=] like ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' and ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes''. Creator/UniversalPictures's then-parent company MCA purchased Creator/{{LJN}} in 1985, with that company entering the games market in 1987, before divesting it to Creator/{{Acclaim}} in 1990. Universal officially entered the games market with Universal Interactive Studios in 1994, but it was transferred away from Universal Pictures to Vivendi's own games division Havas Interactive (which included Creator/{{Sierra}}) following Vivendi's acquisition of Seagram's entertainment assets in 2000, eventually being reduced to a publishing label for for ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot'', ''VideoGame/{{Spyro}}'' and Universal [=IPs=] before consolidated into Vivendi Universal Games in 2004. Warner Communications still held a stake onto Atari's successor Atari Games but would fully own the company in 1993 via Time Warner Interactive before selling the company to WMS Industries, who then merged its assets into Creator/MidwayGames. Midway would eventually be brought out by Creator/WarnerBrosInteractiveEntertainment (who re-entered the games market in 2004) in 2009.[[/note]] The sole exception is, ironically enough, Warner Bros with Creator/WarnerBrosInteractiveEntertainment but much of its growth came from buying Creator/MidwayGames in 2009.

* GenreKiller: ''E.T'' is the mascot of the Great Crash of 1983, which not only reduced Atari to a shadow of its former self for the remainder of the 80s and 90s, but destroyed almost everyone else in the industry, and likely would have sent gaming into a permanent small niche or worse (at least in North America) had Nintendo not stepped up. It's also part of the reason some other Hollywood studios, most notably Creator/{{Disney}}, hesitated entering the gaming market and fumbled several times when they did, eventually exiting by closing down and/or selling their games divisions to other, better-established companies[[note]]Dreamworks established Dreamworks Interactive in 1995 before selling it to Creator/ElectronicArts in 2000; the studio is now operating as Ripple Effect Studios. 20th Century Fox had ''three'' attempts in the gaming market, first with Games of the Century in the early 80s, which closed after 1983-1984; second with Fox Interactive in 1993, which they divested to Creator/VivendiUniversalGames (who also consolidated Universal Interactive Studios into Vivendi Universal Games around the same time) in 2003, which in turn was brought by Creator/{{Activision}} in 2008; and third with [=FoxNext=] in 2017, which Disney acquired through the purchase of 21st Century Fox and afterwards sold it to Scopely as Disney did not want to enter the video game market, as they shut down the ill-performing Disney Interactive three years earlier. Disney has since opened up a new games division for its successor 20th Century Studios called 20th Century Games but it functions solely as a licensor of 20th Century Fox [=IPs=] like ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' and ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes. Creator/UniversalPictures's then-parent company MCA purchased Creator/{{LJN}} in 1985, with that company entering the games market in 1987, before divesting it to Creator/{{Acclaim}} in 1990. Universal officially entered the games market with Universal Interactive Studios in 1994, but it was transferred away from Universal Pictures to Vivendi's own games division Havas Interactive (which included Creator/{{Sierra}}) following Vivendi's acquisition of Seagram's entertainment assets in 2000, eventually being reduced to a publishing label for for ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot'', ''VideoGame/{{Spyro}}'' and Universal [=IPs=] before consolidated into Vivendi Universal Games in 2004. Warner Communications still held a stake onto Atari's successor Atari Games but would fully own the company in 1993 via Time Warner Interactive before selling the company to WMS Industries, who then merged its assets into Creator/MidwayGames. Midway would eventually be brought out by Creator/WarnerBrosInteractiveEntertainment (who re-entered the games market in 2004) in 2009.[[/note]] The sole exception is, ironically enough, Warner Bros with Creator/WarnerBrosInteractiveEntertainment but much of its growth came from buying Creator/MidwayGames in 2009.

* GenreKiller: ''E.T'' is the mascot of the Great Crash of 1983, which not only reduced Atari to a shadow of its former self for the remainder of the 80s and 90s, but destroyed almost everyone else in the industry, and likely would have sent gaming into a permanent small niche or worse had Nintendo not stepped up. It's also part of the reason some other Hollywood studios, most notably Creator/{{Disney}}, hesitated in the gaming market and fumbled several times.

* KillerApp: ''Inverted''. The poor reception of this game, along with others, served to turn people away from the Atari 2600 as well as all other video game consoles for a few years.
* MagnumOpusDissonance: {{Inverted|Trope}}. As seen from the quote on the main page, Howard Scott Warshaw considers it an honor that this is the worst-received game on the system, as in comparison to his best work, ''VideoGame/YarsRevenge'', he has "the greatest range of anyone ever on the machine." He's also been quoted as still being at least somewhat proud of the final result no matter how it turned out, noting that he did what was possible with the short amount of time he was given and that not ''all'' of them were returned.

** For the latter, Warner faced serious financial problems due to the losses from Atari, forcing them to divest assets (aside from Atari) to avoid going bankrupt, such as Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment into MTV Networks before selling it to Viacom. Even then this wasn't enough, and Warner was merged with Time by the end of the 80s to form [=TimeWarner=]

* CreatorKiller: This game is often credited for the Great Crash of 1983, which annihilated Atari and Warner Bros.'s value. While [[MisBlamed it didn't singlehandedly cause the Crash]], it didn't exactly help matters, either. Atari boss Ray Kassar, who had already driven away several programmers that then founded Creator/{{Activision}} and demanded the game's short development timetable, was ousted from his position and he has not been affiliated with the entertainment world at all since 1983. Shortly afterward, Warner sold off Atari, and the classic developer completely lost all of its dominance when Creator/{{Nintendo}}, who broke off their attempted relationship and became a brand-new ArchEnemy, released the NES and ended the crash in 1985, but they were able to hang around for another decade until Atari's inability to recover from the crash culminated in the Atari Jaguar, which finished off the studio.

* CrossDressingVoices: Played straight with E.T. in the original version and in the Japanese dub, but averted in the Latin American Spanish dub, where he is voiced by Héctor Lee.

** Creator/CoreyFeldman was originally up for a role as a rival to Elliott, a dork named Lance who threatened to expose E.T. The character is in the book adaptation, but was cut from the script. Creator/StevenSpielberg felt bad about leaving Corey out and promised him a role in future films he would work on, and he would go on to be in ''Film/{{Gremlins}}'' and ''Film/TheGoonies''.

* TheWikiRule: [[http://ettheextraterrestrial.fandom.com/wiki/E.T._The_Extra_Terrestrial_Wiki The E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Wiki]].

** The first choice to play Gertie? Creator/JulietteLewis. Her father made her turn down the role and Drew Barrymore was cast instead. A very young Creator/SarahMichelleGellar also auditioned.

* TropeNamer:
** ETGaveUsWiFi.
** ThisIsReality

* BillingDisplacement: Creator/DeeWallace as Elliott's mother, Mary.

** Originally, Elliot was supposed to have an Eddie Haskell-like friend named Lance. He still appears in the novelization and the storybook.

** Creator/HarrisonFord filmed a scene as the principal of Elliot's school, set after he frees the frogs, which Spielberg cut because he felt Ford's presence was too distracting (even though his face is never seen, in keeping with the motif of Mary being the only adult whose face is seen for most of the film).
** Two deleted scenes were reinstated for the [[SpecialEdition 20th Anniversary Edition]]: Elliot shows E.T. the bathroom and gets a call from his mother and fakes throwing up on the phone. E.T. plays around in the bathtub and Elliot thinks he's drowning, but it turns out he's rather enjoying himself. The other one shows Mary tracking down Mike and Gertie during their trick or treating. Gertie (now in her cowgirl costume) spills the beans on where Elliot is, and Mary (smiling, but insistent) tells them to get into the car.
** There was a subplot cut in which E.T. was in love with Elliot's mom. He goes into her room and leaves a Reese's Piece on her pillow.
** There's a scene of when E.T.'s getting Elliot drunk. Elliot gets sent to the nurse's office and writes the plans for the communicator on the wall.
** There was originally an alternate ending showing [[BookEnds the boys playing]] ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' with Elliot as the dungeon master. The camera pans up to the roof, where the communicator is calling out to E.T.

* SequelGap: Of a sort. In 2019 a commercial for Xfinity premiered during the UsefulNotes/MacysThanksgivingDayParade, where E.T. returns to Earth to reunite with a grown-up Elliot (still played by Henry Jackson Thomas Jr.) and meet his family.

** Gertie's line "I don't like his feet!" was ad-libbed, as was her "Gimme a break!" response to Elliot's claim that grown-ups can't see E.T. You can also hear her prattling away unscripted in the background while Elliot and Michael are showing E.T. maps and trying to get him to tell them where home is for him.

** Creator/ShelleyLong was approached to play Elliot's mother. She turned it down as she was already signed on for the comedy ''Film/NightShift''.

** Elliot was originally going to lure E.T. into his house using [=M&M's=], but this proposal of ProductPlacement was ''rejected'' by the company's executive, who perceived the movie as having an AudienceAlienatingPremise. Instead, Reese's Pieces were used, and Hershey's sold so many Reese's Pieces that they were able to become a major competitor to the Mars Candy Company. [=M&M's=] are still used in the novelization.