History Trivia / FlowersInTheAttic

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The story goes that Andrews got the inspiration for ''Flowers in the Attic'' from a doctor who treated her in her teen years, who she had a crush on. When she mentioned to him that she wanted to be a writer, her told about how, when he was growing up, he and his siblings were hidden away in a house for several years for financial reasons, and suggested this would make a good premise for a novel.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The story goes that Andrews got the inspiration for ''Flowers in the Attic'' from a doctor who treated her in her teen years, who she had a crush on. When she mentioned to him that she wanted to be a writer, her told about how, when he was growing up, he and his siblings were hidden away in a house for several years for financial reasons, and suggested this would make a good premise for a novel.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The story goes that Andrews got the inspiration for ''Flowers in the Attic'' from a doctor of her's that she had a crush on, who supposedly (along with his siblings) was locked up in an attic for several years.

!!The 1987 feature film provides trivia of:
* ExecutiveMeddling: Allegedly, quite a lot, resulting in significant changes to the source material (see Death by Adaptation above for only one major example). Primarily, they removed all hints of BrotherSisterIncest from a work primarily known for BrotherSisterIncest.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: In her pitch letter for ''Flowers in the Attic,'' Andrews insisted that the book was based on real events. Later, family members stated that during her adolescent hospital stays, Andrews had become enamored with a handsome young doctor and that he had confided that he and his siblings had been locked in an attic for many years in order to gain an inheritance. No other evidence has come forth to confirm this claim (and Andrews and her publishers distanced themselves from the story over the years) but it occasionally surfaces as an urban legend.
** To a lesser extent, the incident where the grandmother puts tar in Cathy's hair may have really happened, in a roundabout way, to Andrews herself. After the tarring, Cathy tells a story about how she and a friend once overturned a bucket of tar from a road repaving and played in it, getting completely filthy and ending up with tar in their hair. An apocryphal anecdote from one of Andrews' relatives claims that this happened to Andrews as a young girl: while playing in some tar at a road paving, young Andrews got the muck in her hair and had to have it cut boyishly short to remove it. The relative claimed that Andrews, who prided herself on her long golden hair, was [[TraumaticHaircut traumatized by the incident.]]

* CreatorCameo: V.C. Andrews appears as a maid washing windows.
* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler: The children's mother dies at the end of the movie due to ExecutiveMeddling, as the studio didn't believe the audience would be satisfied if the mother wasn't punished for her crimes.]] This ending might also be the rare Death By Adaptation that killed off ''an entire franchise'', as the character played a crucial role in later books. The director was so frustrated by this change that he refused to shoot it, and the entire sequence was filmed by a last-minute replacement.

* BillingDisplacement: Like the 1987 movie, the actress playing Cathy is billed after her mother. Kiernan Shipka is actually billed third after Heather Graham and Ellen Burstyn. It's the same in ''Petals On The Wind'', where those two get billed above Rose [=McIver=].

** Heather Graham--usually a MsFanservice or EveryoneLovesBlondes--as a FallenPrincess who [[spoiler: decides to murder her children]].
** Ellen Burstyn finds herself playing a lot of CoolOldLady characters or else sympathetic older women. Playing the EvilMatriarch like Olivia Foxworth is very different.

** To a lesser extent, the incident where the grandmother puts tar in Cathy's hair may have really happened, in a roundabout way, to Andrews herself: after the tarring, Cathy tells a story about how she and a friend once overturned a bucket of tar from a road repaving and played in it, getting completely filthy and ending up with tar in their hair. An apocryphal anecdote from one of Andrews' relatives claims that this happened to Andrews as a young girl--while playing in some tar at a road paving, young Andrews got the muck in her hair and had to have it cut boyishly short to remove it. The relative claimed that Andrews, who prided herself on her long golden hair, was [[TraumaticHaircut traumatized by the incident.]]

** Heavily averted for Cathy, as Kiernan Shipka was 13 during. This results in AdaptationalModesty happening with regards to Cathy's nudity.

!!The 1987 movie provides trivia of:
* ApprovalOfGod: Virginia Andrews met with Kristy Swanson just before filming, and said she was exactly how she'd pictured Cathy.
* BillingDisplacement: Creator/KristySwanson (Cathy) is billed below Victoria Tennant (Corrine), although Cathy is the main character and her older self narrates.
* CaliforniaDoubling: Foxworth Hall, set in Charlottesville, Virginia, was actually filmed at Castle Hill, a Tudor Revival mansion, in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
* CreatorBacklash: Victoria Tennant disliked the tacked-on ending where [[spoiler: Corrine gets hung on her wedding day]] and refused to film it, so a body double had to be used. Director Jeffrey Bloom hated it too, as it was filmed by a second unit against his wishes.
* CreatorCameo: Virginia C Andrews has a cameo as a woman washing the windows during a montage.
* DawsonCasting:
** Jeb Stuart Adams was twenty-six playing the sixteen year old Chris. This creates an AdaptationInducedPlotHole - as Chris was fourteen in the book when he's first locked in the attic but now he's older and perfectly able to physically overpower his grandmother.
** Kristy Swanson was a little better, as she was sixteen when the movie started production and turned seventeen during it.
* DeletedRole: Alex Koba claims that most of his dialogue was cut, including him providing a surprise plot twist.
* DeletedScene: Two that were shown being filmed on a Making Of programme about the movie:
** Chris and Cathy walking around Corrine's bedroom, wondering why there are no pictures of them or their father in there.
** A confrontation between Corrine and her mother after [[spoiler: Cory's death]], where the latter is smiling.
** An alternate wedding [[spoiler: showing Malcolm Foxworth still alive]].
** The 2018 Blu-Ray release contained several alternate scenes, plus the ones mentioned above. One scene shows the children being attacked by the grandmother with a knife, another where they are menaced by the groundskeeper with an electric drill. The original version of the wedding sequence shows Corrine in a different gown that bares her arms, upper chest, and throat (unlike the dress in the theatrical release, which has long white sleeves and a high neck; it's suspected that the more modest gown may have been to conceal the fact that the Corrine in the death scene was a double). And a still shot shows Cory [[spoiler:lying dead in a swan-shaped boat in the lake.]]
* ExecutiveMeddling: Producers insisted on the ending [[spoiler: where Corrine dies on her wedding day to Bart, feeling the audience would want to see the children get some revenge on her]]. Jeffrey Bloom didn't want to film it, so they got a second unit to do so.
* FatalMethodActing: A near-miss. Kristy Swanson was standing too close to a propane heater and her skirt caught fire.
* MissingEpisode: For years, the only thing scene of the original ending were photos. However, in 2018 it was announced that there would be a new blu-ray with the ending as a bonus feature... [[NoExportForYou but only for region two]].
* PlayingGertrude: Victoria Tennant is only eleven years older than her onscreen eldest son Jeb Stuart Adams.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** Wes Craven wrote a screenplay that was quite faithful to the original novel. It can be read [[http://www.completevca.com/bio_exclusive_craven.shtml here]].
** Then-unknown Creator/SharonStone auditioned for Corrine. Jeffrey Bloom liked her for the part, but producers opposed it.
** Alex Koba, who played John the butler, claims that three different endings were filmed and the studio picked "the worst one". The director's intended ending had the children [[spoiler: walking out of their attic prison as Corrine's wedding was going on and escaping then]].
** According to Kristy Swanson, the BrotherSisterIncest was filmed but cut due to negative reactions from test audiences. Some scenes included Chris watching Cathy undressing through the bathroom keyhole. Other bits of nudity were also cut to secure a lower rating.
** A script for a sequel (''Petals On the Wind'') was created for the second novel and Creator/KristySwanson and Louise Fletcher would have reprised their roles. The sequel would have focused upon Cathy's various affairs with other men, in order to try and escape her fears of falling for her brother and substituted the grandmother in Corrine's role, as far as Corrine seducing her grandmother's new boyfriend as payback for her cruelty towards her grandchildren. Swanson described the script she read as "a real sex-fest."

** Mason Dye was nineteen playing Chris at sixteen.
** Heavily averted for Cathy, as Kiernan Shipka was thirteen during. This results in AdaptationalModesty happening with regards to Cathy's nudity.
** Bailey De Young, who plays Carrie in ''Literature/PetalsOnTheWind'' was ''twenty-five''.
* TheOtherDarrin: None of the actors playing the children carry over to the ''Literature/PetalsOnTheWind'' adaptation. Presumably due to Kiernan Shipka being a teenager, she couldn't convincingly play the adult Cathy, so Rose [=McIver=] replaces her. Wyatt Nash also replaces Mason Dye as Chris

** Heather Graham - usually a MsFanservice or EveryoneLovesBlondes - as a FallenPrincess who [[spoiler: decides to murder her children]].

** A script for a sequel (''Petals On the Wind'') was created for the second novel and Creator/KristySwanson and Louise Fletcher would have reprised their roles. The sequel would have focused upon Cathy's various affairs with other men, in order to try and escape her fears of falling for her brother and substituted the grandmother in Corrine's role, as far as Corrine seducing her grandmother's new boyfriend as payback for her cruelty towards her grandchildren.

!!The movie/s provides trivia of:

** While the 2014 Lifetime version hews closer to the novel, this billing trope remains - Kiernan Shipka (a much more age-appropriate Cathy than Miss Swanson) is billed ''third'' with Heather Graham (Corrine) and Ellen Burstyn (the grandmother) coming before her.
* DawsonCasting: This was one of the problems with the film adaptation. The actors playing the elder children are the size of full-grown adults but *act* as though they're relatively young children. This even [[PlotHole breaks the plot]] - the male lead is large enough to physically overpower the abusive grandmother, which would make escaping from the large, empty mansion trivial. The actor playing Chris was 26! Although, WMG here, but perhaps [[spoiler: being the product of incest]] might have made them feeble.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Wes Craven wrote a screenplay that Andrews turned down, and Sharon Stone auditioned for the part of Corrine.
** Craven's ending luckily survived; the studio was not happy with other scripts they commissioned that kept the downer ending where [[spoiler: like in the original book, Corrine and the grandmother get away with everything]]. So they grafted the Wes Craven ending onto the script that they ultimately picked to film in order to tie up loose ends and give the series closure with [[spoiler: Corrine getting killed for her crimes]].
*** A script for a sequel (''Petals On the Wind'') was created for the second novel and Creator/KristySwanson and Louise Fletcher would have reprised their roles. The sequel would have focused upon Cathy's various affairs with other men, in order to try and escape her fears of falling for her brother and substituted the grandmother in Corrine's role, as far as Corrine seducing her grandmother's new boyfriend as payback for her cruelty towards her grandchildren.

** Craven's ending luckily survived; the studio was not happy with other scripts they commissioned that kept the downer ending where [[spoiler: like in the original book, Corrine and her grandmother get away with everything]]. So they grafted the Wes Craven ending onto the script that they ultimately picked to film in order to tie up loose ends and give the series closure with [[spoiler: Corrine getting killed for her crimes]].
*** A script for a sequel (''Petals On the Wind'') was created for the second novel and Creator/KristySwanson and Louis Fletcher would have reprised their roles. The sequel would have focused upon Cathy's various affairs with other men, in order to try and escape her fears of falling for her brother and substituted the grandmother in Corrines role, as far as Corrine seducing her grandmother's new boyfriend as payback for her cruelty towards her grandchildren.

* HeyItsThatGuy:
** [[WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra Jinora]] is Cathy
** Heather Graham is Corrine
** The original Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer plays the original Cathy in the first film. [[OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest Nurse Ratchett]] (Louise Fletcher) plays the grandmother.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: In her pitch letter for ''Flowers in the Attic,'' Andrews insisted that the book was based on real events. Later, family members stated that during her adolescent hospital stays, Andrews had become enamored with a handsome young doctor and that he had confided that he and his siblings had been locked in an attic for many years in order to gain an inheritance. No other evidence has come forth to confirm this claim (and Andrews and her publishers distanced themselves from the story over the years) but it occasionally surfaces as an urban legend.

* BillingDisplacement: Kristy Swanson (Cathy) is billed below Victoria Tennant (Corrine), although Cathy is the main character and her older self narrates.

*** A script for a sequel (''Petals On the Wind'') was created for the second novel and Kristy Swanson and Louis Fletcher would have reprised their roles. The sequel would have focused upon Cathy's various affairs with other men, in order to try and escape her fears of falling for her brother and substituted the grandmother in Corrines role, as far as Corrine seducing her grandmother's new boyfriend as payback for her cruelty towards her grandchildren.

** Craven's ending luckily survived; the studio was not happy with other scripts they commissioned that kept the downer ending where [[spoiler: like in the original book, Corrine and her grandmother get away with everything]]. So they grafted the Wes Craven ending onto the script that they ultimately picked to film in order to tie up loose ends and give the series closure with [[spoiler: Corine getting killed for her crimes]].