Trivia / Bill & Ted Face the Music

• Acclaimed Flop: In spite of positive reviews, the COVID-19 Pandemic limited the film's theatrical reach, earning only $6.3 million out of a $25 million budget. Thankfully the VOD numbers compensated, with $32 million from the US alone in its first month.
• Acting for Two: Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves respectively reprise their roles as Bill and Ted, in addition to portraying their future counterparts.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Brigette Lundy-Paine is nonbinary, while Wilhelmina wears androgynous clothing: a rashguard top for most of the film and a suit jacket at the wedding.
• Author's Saving Throw: Shortly after the film was announced, the director confirmed they'd be dropping the "fag" Running Gag from the first two films which has since fallen hard into Values Dissonance.
• B-Team Sequel: Dean Parisot directs the film this time around, while Mark Isham replaces David Newman as its composer.
• The Character Died with Him: While they don't say it outright, it's fairly obvious Rufus has passed on given the sad looks between Bill, Ted and Kelly when first discussing him and Bill and Ted's reaction to his hologram when going to meet the Great Leader. The character is also spoken about in past-tense as well.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Anthony Carrigan had to endure many hours getting fitted into his costume and prosthetics. Because it all covered his entire body and removing it was such a hassle, he resorted to removing the costume's gloves and plunging his hands in ice water between takes to try and regulate his body temperature.
• Executive Meddling: The actors complained that it was hard to get a sequel made with Orion wanting to do a remake or a sequel/remake where Bill and Ted take a role similar to Rufus helping younger teenagers pass History and start a band.
• Fake American: Australian actress Samara Weaving played the most Southern Californian Theodora “Thea” Preston.
• Fake Nationality:
  • German-born Daniel Dorr plays the Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
  • Houston native Sharon Gee plays the Chinese Ling Lun.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes are the third set of actresses to play Princesses Joanna and Elizabeth.
  • Beck Bennett replaces Frazier Bain as Ted's brother, Deacon.
  • Most foreign dubs had their voice actors replaced, due to the time gap between the last two films and this one:
    • In the Latin Spanish dub, the titular duo are voiced by Marco Guerrero and Dafnis Fernández.
    • The Japanese dub is a quite interesting case: The titular duo are voiced by Wataru Takagi and Toshiyuki Morikawa respectively. The fun part of this goes with the fact that Takagi voiced Ted in the TV Tokyo dub of Bogus, while Morikawa, who is the regular dub voice of Keanu Reeves in Japan, dubs Ted for the first time.
• Playing with Character Type: Anthony Carrigan is best-known for playing murderers and psychopaths. His character is introduced as a coldly efficient murder bot, but he turns out to be a socially awkward dork named Dennis Caleb McCoy who annoys everyone with his existential crisis.
• Posthumous Credit: George Carlin is still credited for his appearance as Rufus despite dying of heart failure 12 years before the film's release.
• Real-Life Relative: Both George Carlin (Rufus) and his daughter Kelly Carlin (Head Technician) appear in the film.
• Release Date Change: Was originally intended to release on August 21st, 2020, but then a bunch of other films changed their release dates due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The film was rescheduled first to August 14th, and then to August 28th to avoid conflicting with the rescheduled release of Tenet. As August approached, surges in the pandemic across the United States led to many films being pulled from the schedule; it was ultimately decided that Bill & Ted would be rescheduled one more time for a limited theatrical release (mostly drive-ins) and a simultaneous debut on digital platforms on September 1st. And then it moved back to August 28th to avoid a head-to-head matchup with Mulan after that film announced a September 4th digital release.
• Role Reprise:
  • Returning from the previous films are Keanu Reeves as Ted Theodore Logan, Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston Esquire, Hal Landon Jr. as John Logan, Amy Stoch as Missy and William Sadler as the Grim Reaper.
  • In the Japanese dub, Akio Ōtsuka reprises his role as the Grim Reaper from the TV Tokyo dub of Bogus.
• Saved from Development Hell: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter spent years saying that they were eager and willing to make a third film. A screenplay was completed and went through several rounds of rewrites, and there was a production company willing to front at least part of the budget. Unfortunately, none of these were with the company that owns the actual rights to the franchise (that being MGM, who had acquired both Orion Pictures and the library of producer Nelson Entertainment) and everything kept hitting a roadblock over who pays for what and gets how much of the resulting pie. Fortunately, it was announced on May 8, 2018 that the third film is now in production for real, although a release date wasn't announced at the time. On March 20, 2019, the day that production had begun, Reeves and Winter announced that film is scheduled to arrive in theaters on August 28, 2020 (see Release Date Change above).
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Fans were demanding a third Bill & Ted film and Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter were all for it. Unfortunately, the rights to the franchise were a tangled mess and it took years to sort out who owned what and how much money they'd accept to let the film be made.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Brigette Lundy-Paine really looks like they could be Keanu Reeves' daughter. The two share an uncanny resemblance and Lundy-Paine goes to great lengths to mimic Ted's every tic.
• Sequel Gap: There is a 29-year gap between this film and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The film lampshades this and makes it a plot point, showing how the duo went about their lives in the interim.
• Studio Hop: Sort of. The first film was produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, but it went bankrupt and delayed the first movie's release; it was rescued by Orion Pictures and Nelson Entertainment, who also co-produced the second movie. This one is also from Orion, but a revived version owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (who had acquired Orion and partial rights to the Nelson assets in the late 1990s).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Bill and Ted were supposed to travel back to the night they met Rufus for advice. A CGI recreation of Carlin as Rufus was planned; however, it proved too time-consuming and costly, so the production team instead repurposed footage of Rufus from the first film, with Piotr Michael serving as a voice double. We do get a glimpse at what could have been due to a Wal-Mart commercial that involves old Bill and young Bill turning up at Wal-Mart picking up a call-in order (with young Bill looking like he stepped right out of 1989, wearing the same clothing as well).
  • Instead of Dave Grohl's guest appearance, originally the producers wanted Eddie Van Halen to appear in the film. Ed Solomon stated that they asked him, seeing as he had stated that he would have been happy to be in the first film had he been asked to appear. However, his agent stated he wasn't available and didn't provide a reason why. It was after his passing at 65 that the producers learned it was due to him struggling with cancer.