Acting in the Dark: The killer's identity was kept secret from the actors, though Neil Affleck claims to have figured it out after being cast when he was fitted for a fake arm to be ripped off in the finale.
Executive Meddling: Paramount infamously refused to allow the film's director to attempt to reassemble the film's original cut when the film was first released upon DVD, nor did they allow any sort of supplementary material to be filmed with the director or the actors involved in the film (as at the time, Paramount didn't think their slasher back catalog worthy of DVD extras or anything other than a barebones release). This finally changed when Lionsgate secured the rights to the movie due to the then-upcoming remake and released a new uncut version.
International Co Production: The film was co-produced and co-funded by Canadians and features Canadian actors and a mostly Canadian crew. With special makeup effects duties by American effects artist Tom Burman and his studio.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: The film fell out of print after its initial VHS release; the DVD did so too after its release, as did the double feature disc that paired it with April Fools' Day. The Lionsgate DVD (which contains the uncensored cut of the film) was still in print before it too was pulled from circulation. Fortunately it got a reissue by Scream Factory.
Missing Episode: While a majority of the cut footage is restored for the 2009 DVD release (thanks to producer John Dunning keeping it safe in a storage unit), there's a good 20% of stuff that unfortunately could not be restored due to the original negative getting corroded over the years or due to scenes simply being missing. One example being Mike and Harriet's double impalement death which director Mihalka remembers filming.
"There was a scene with the two kids in the mine and they’re joined together forever,”..... “There was a whole setup scene to that. They’re just necking and Tom’s lying on top of [Harriet] and the miner comes in and puts the [drill bit] through him. She’s got her eyes closed and thinks he’s just being a little frisky. She opens her mouth and her eyes just widen as he bleeds into her mouth. Then the miner goes whoomp! And [skewers] them both. That scene had to be taken out totally. It has disappeared and we’ll never see it.”
The Princess Colliery Mine in Sidney Mines, Nova Scotia, was chosen because it was "a dreary, cold and dusty area [with] no other buildings around it so it looked like it was totally in the middle of nowhere." However, the owners of the mine were so excited about a film being made there, they cleaned up and painted everything, making it look "Disneyland-like." The crew had to spend $30,000 to repaint portions to look like it was originally (some sources put this figure at $75,000).
Filming in a real mine up to 2,700 feet underground came with a number of complications, like taking an hour for the cast and crew to get down to the sets due to limited space in the elevators, and methane limited how many lightbulbs could be used. Producer John Dunning called the process "horrendous."
A sequel was proposed, but ultimately declined. A treatment and/or script was apparently done for it however. Going by information that's out about it, it would have taken place in an amusement park built where the original mine killing occurred. The cut gore footage from the original was to be inserted into the sequel as flashback sequences.
Lionsgate's original plan for their 2009 DVD was to simply have the cut footage as a special feature, since the whole point of the release was to promote the remake. But when early reports of this hit the internet fans immediately spoke up against the idea, successfully petitioning the company to have the footage reinserted into the film once and for all.
Word of Saint Paul: Both George Mihalka and Paul Kelman have different explanations for why TJ left the town. The former believing he did it to make a living in a different industry, only to get setback by a then recession. The latter believed he tried to go to University but failed to get in.
The band:
Creator Backlash: The band does not think much of their non-shoegazing period (everything they released before the Strawberry Wine EP).
Creator Breakdown: One of the reasons for the twenty-plus-year recording process of MBV.
Missing Episode: According to the "Class of '91" article in November 1991's edition of Melody Maker, the band recorded two additional EPs besides Glider and Tremolo during the Loveless sessions, but scrapped them because they didn't feel they were worth releasing.
Enforced Method Acting: On "Isn't Anything" and "Loveless", Kevin frequently got Bilinda to record straight after waking her up. The "dreamy" quality her vocals are described as having is almost literally that.
False Credit: Bassist Debbie Googe did not perform on the band's landmark album Loveless, due to bandleader Kevin Shields finding it easier to record the bass parts he had envision himself instead of explaining to Googe what he wanted them to sound like. In a less extreme example, Bilinda Butcher is credited for playing guitar on the album despite only being featured as a vocalist.
No Export for You: For a long period of time, their music was only on Spotify in the US and Canada, as Sire Records owned the license to their albums then. Domino Recording Company would later release their catalog elsewhere after they signed with the label in 2021.
Referenced by...: The Show Within a ShowLoveless within the universe of Final Fantasy VII is confirmed by Word of God to be a reference to the band's most acclaimed album. Not that this really needed confirmation, since the game also features a poster with the band's name on it, and the appearance of the woman on the poster in the original game is a case of Comic-Book Fantasy Casting based on the appearance of Bilinda Butcher.
As seen above, there were more than two decades in between Loveless and MBV, despite the fact that the group never officially disbanded during that time. There were long periods of silence when nothing would be heard about the album at all, and Kevin abandoned it for several years, but for most of the rest of that time he was working on it. The Loveless remaster also fell victim to this, albeit to a much lesser extent.
Kevin has said that the Isn't Anything and Loveless remasters and the EP's 1988-1991 compilation were delayed due to Executive Meddling on Sony's behalf, and having to threaten them with getting Scotland Yard involved to get them to turn over the original multitrack tapes.
due to Executive Meddling on Sony's behalf, and having to threaten them with getting Scotland Yard involved to get them to turn over the original multitrack tapes.