For the novel, see here. For the 2022 film, see here.
- Banned in China:
- When they weren't yet in power, Nazis campaigned to get the film banned from Germany thanks to its anti-war and perceived anti-German messages. During the film's premiere, Joseph Goebbels had Brownshirts of the Sturmabteilung raid theaters and disrupt screenings of the film with stink bombs, sneezing powder, and white mice while falsely claiming that the movie was part of a Jewish conspiracy, which eventually devolved into antisemitic riots. The plan worked, and the film was banned at the end of 1930, which Goebbels considered the Nazis' first "real victory". A heavily Bowdlerised version of the film was put out in 1931, but the Nazis banned that too after coming to power two years later. The fiasco would later inform Universal's decision to Bowdlerise the antifascist message of the film's 1937 sequel, The Road Back, after the Nazis threatened a total embargo on the studio's material.
- Between 1930 to 1941, this was one of many films to be banned in Australia by the Chief Censor Creswell O'Reilly.
- The film was also banned in Fascist Italy and Austria (1931 for the latter, with the prohibition officially raised only in the 1980s), and in France up to 1963.
- Cast the Expert: While researching accuracy, Lewis Milestone found lots of German World War I veterans living in Los Angeles — so he cast them in the film.
- Dueling Works: The film was released the same year as the German picture Westfront 1918. Both are pacifist movies set in the trenches of the Western front (both even name it in their title) during the middle-to-late stages of World War I and focusing on the German point of view, each telling how War Is Hell. Most likely thanks to being a Hollywoodian production and being based on a much more well known book to begin with (not to mention the fact Westfront 1918 almost faded into oblivion due to being banned by the Nazis as well), All Quiet on the Western Front ended up the most famous of the two by a very large margin.
- Enforced Method Acting: The scene where the German troops are laying communication wire in the trenches was achieved by having a former German soldier drilling the extras into doing it for real.
- Fake Nationality: Of the leads, Lew Ayres (Paul), Louis Wolheim (Stanislaus), Ben Alexander (Franz) and John Wray (Himmelstoss) are American, while Arnold Lucy (Kantorek) is British.
- Missing Trailer Scene: The original actress for Paul's mother appears in the trailer (see below).
- No Export for You: The Extended Edition Blu-Ray and DVD (with 8 more minutes of footage) was only ever released in Germany.
- The Other Marty:
- Comedienne Zasu Pitts was originally cast as Paul's Mother. A preview audience kept laughing when she appeared on-screen, forcing director Lewis Milestone to reshoot her scenes with Beryl Mercer.
- Future Academy Award-winning director Fred Zinnemann — From Here to Eternity — had small roles as a soldier and a French ambulance driver but was fired early on.
- Reality Subtext: A dying French soldier Gerard Duval, who gets stabbed by Paul, is played by Raymond Griffith — a star of the Silent Era who had lost his voice due to illness as a child. This was his final film, as the coming of sound meant his career was over.
- Throw It In!: A scene in the film has a soldier grabbing onto barbed wire and then getting blown up by an artillery shell, leaving only his hand behind. Lewis Milestone added it in after being told the story by a former soldier working on set.
- What Could Have Been: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was considered for the lead role in the 1930 film.
