Trivia / Midnight Madness

• Actor Allusion: Adam drinks Dr. Pepper (he's played by David Naughton, famed at the time as the star of the "Be a Pepper" commercial).
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $7 million (estimated). Box office, $2.9 million. One of Disney's first attempts at a live-action movie for an older audience, it disappeared quickly in theaters before getting Vindicated by Cable.
• Colbert Bump: Midnight Madness' popularity got got a major boost when Doug Walker highly praised and recommended it in the final episode of Disneycember 2021, saying that more people need to see it!
• Creator's Oddball: Disney doing a raucous, slightly raunchy Comedy was way out of character in 1980, and its failure led them to shy away from that style again. But interestingly, tonewise it's not all that different from the Disney Channel's house style for comedy shows and movies in the modern era.
• Dawson Casting: Michael J. Fox, in his first movie, was 18 years old and was hired to played Adam's younger brother Scott who is 15 due to him being older than he looked.
• Defictionalization: No doubt thanks to the film's Cult Classic status, real-life "Midnight Madness" games have been done on a yearly (or biannual) basis in places like Austin, Texas and Hot Springs, Arkansas.
  • Alan Solomon (who played Leon in the film) occasionally makes guest appearances at the real life games as the "Games Master".
• Follow the Leader: This film was made by Disney during a time when they were in a cinematic slump due their films not being as successful as they used to be so in desperation, the House of Mouse took a gander at the amount of cash Animal House raked in and decided to release their own college comedy film aimed at an older audience. This was Disney's second film to have a PG rating after The Black Hole. While Disney did eventually recover from this slump, Midnight Madness had nothing to do with it, being a critical and commercial failure and an Old Shame for the company, though they would eventually come around when the film started gaining popularity.
  • Basically, you can sum the movie up as a less raunchy Animal House meets a Lighter and Softer variation on The Warriors (set in a single night in a big city, as various colorful groups of young people tangle with one another).
• Vindicated by Cable: HBO saves the film, again, giving it lots of spins in the wake of Michael J. Fox's Family Ties and Back to the Future stardom.
• What Could Have Been: The film was originally titled The All-Night Treasure Hunt but was changed to avoid confusion with Scavenger Hunt (1979).

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