Trivia / Cujo

• Creator Breakdown: In his later memoir, On Writing, King said he drank so heavily while writing this that there are large parts of it he doesn't remember writing.
• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: Stephen King preferred the movie's ending where Tad doesn't die.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The dog playing Cujo was such a Big Friendly Dog that getting him to show any degree of aggression was a struggle. As such, the dogs were occasionally substituted with puppets, or by a stunt man or rottweiler in a costume.
• Pet Fad Starter: Inverted; the movie of the book caused a decline in the sales of St. Bernard dogs. Quite ironic, since, unlike most examples of this trope, St. Bernards are great low maintenance pets, and the St. Bernard in the movie was only violent due to rabies.
• Reality Subtext: It's not hard to see parallels between Cujo's rabies infection and his author's struggles with cocaine addiction and alcohol abuse. Doubly so since King actually wrote the book in the middle of a bender so bad he has no memory of writing it.
• Referenced by...: Jotaro Kujo, the overarching Big Good of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and The Hero of Stardust Crusaders, gets his surname from Cujo, as writer Hirohiko Araki is a Nightmare Fetishist who is a fan of horror novels.
• Technology Marches On: The entire second half of the book would have been negated with cellphones, in two different ways:
  • Obviously, Donna could have called for help when trapped by Cujo.
  • And even if she had forgotten her phone, in modern times she could have texted where she was to Vic rather than leave it on a board for Steve to erase.
  • There's also the fact that Joe had to find the police office with the phone book, leading to his death and Cujo's continuing rampage. The 911 shortcut wasn't in place yet.

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