Trivia / Animal House

• Actor-Inspired Element: Flounder's picture that pops up on the slideshow during the pledge review scene was reportedly Stephen Furst's actual acting headshot.
• Actor-Inspired Heroism: John Landis described the scene of Bluto going to greater and greater lengths to cheer Flounder up was a portrait of the real John Belushi, a generous, big-hearted guy who just wanted to make people laugh.
• Breakthrough Hit: For John Landis.
• California Doubling: While Faber College is supposedly in Pennsylvania (or Tennessee, if the state flag in the tribunal scene is any indication), filming actually took place at the University of Oregon. While Word of God has the setting in Pennsylvania, it isn't explicitly stated in the film, although Flounder is referred to as being from Harrisburg, and there is a Dickinson College in Pennsylvania (though it isn't named after Emily Dickinson), the general vibe seems to be of the Nowhere, USA type.
• Career Resurrection: For Elmer Bernstein, whose career was mostly spent scoring TV shows in the 1970's (a far cry from The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Magnificent Seven (1960)). His work on the film later made him a go-to composer for many popular comedies (such as Airplane!, Stripes and Ghostbusters (1984)) and he became John Landis's Associated Composer. In fact, Landis actually knew Bernstein when he was a kid, and had actually gone to school with his son, Peter.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Mark Metcalf originally auditioned for Otter before being cast as Niedermeyer.
  • Martha Smith originally auditioned to play Mandy, but switched to Babs when she discovered that the former role required her to strip for John Belushi's peeping tom scene.
• The Character Died with Him: The follow-up featurette Where Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni Update had Hardbar saying that Doug Kenney's character Stork had "bit the big one."
• Character Outlives Actor: Since the Grim Reaper rendered John Belushi unavailable for the role of Bluto in a follow-up mockumentary produced as a special feature, it's explained that Bluto was busy with his duties as President of the United States at the time the mockumentary was made and thus wasn't available for interview.
• Completely Different Title:
  • In Finland, the film was named Delta-jengi.
  • The Greece release loosely translates to A Crazy... Crazy Menagerie.
• The Danza: John Belushi as John "Bluto" Blutarsky.
• Dawson Casting: Most of the cast. For example, Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer) was 32. One of the other most notable examples was 19-year-old (at the time of production) actress Sarah Holcomb, who played 13-year-old statutory rape victim Clorette DePasto. Justified in the case of Bluto. ("Seven years of college down the drain!"). There was also Kevin Bacon, who was actually of college age at the time, but was still an example because he was 20 while his character was a freshman.
• Defictionalization: DeWayne Jessie, the actor who played Otis Day, changed his name and recorded with the Knights.
  • For a while in the 80s, if you asked for Babs at Universal Studios Hollywood, you'd get some sort of incentive; it apparently depended on whoever was running the tour that day. Sadly, Universal announced they would no longer honor it in 1989.
• Deleted Role: Sunny Johnson is listed in the credits as "Otter's Co-Ed". She does not appear in the movie, however, as her scene was cut.
• Deleted Scene: The original cut of the movie was a lengthy 175 minutes and more than an hour was dropped; the deleted scenes included:
  • A John Landis cameo as a cafeteria dishwasher who tries to stop Bluto from eating all the food. Landis is dragged across a table and thrown to the floor by Bluto who then says "You don't fuck with the eagles unless you know how to fly."
  • A scene where Boon and Hoover tell Pinto the tales of legendary Delta House frat brothers from years before who had names like Tarantula, Bulldozer, Giraffe, and his girlfriend, Gross Kay.
  • Two different deleted scenes with Otter and a couple of his girlfriends (one played by Sunny Johnson—listed in the credits as "Otter's Co-Ed" although her scene was deleted—and the other played by location scout Katherine Wilson, whose deleted scene can be seen in the theatrical trailer).
  • An extended version of the scene where Bluto pours mustard on himself and starts singing "I am the Mustard Man."
  • A sequence showing expelled Deltas going through a medical screening after having to register for the draft, during which the double-jointed D-Day rotates his feet backwards (this scene was removed a few months after release due to many young men hurting themselves while trying to emulate the stunt).
• Doing It for the Art: The whole reason why the movie was made. According to National Lampoon publisher Matty Simmons, who eventually co-produced the film with Ivan Reitman, he had suggested making a movie as a means of placating co-writer Douglas Kenney, who was also working at the magazine as editor-in-chief. At the time, Kenney had told Simmons that he was suffering heavily from burnout and having a hard time meeting deadlines and had decided to quit as a result. Simmons, however, did not want Kenney to leave as he was one of the most important contributors to the magazine's humor, and in trying to convince him to stay, accidentally blurted out, "We're going to make a movie."
• Dyeing for Your Art: After firing the crew hairdresser (who wanted extra time off), John Landis took the core Delta actors to a local barber shop and asked the barber if he could do early 1960s-style haircuts. The man looked at the pictures and said it would be easy. He did all of the actors' haircuts, one after another.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • When not filming, John Landis purposely prevented the actors playing Deltas from interacting with the actors playing Omegas so that the "enemies" wouldn't end up bonding with each other (the Delta actors were even brought to the set a few weeks earlier than the Omegas to achieve this).
  • As a mark of the success of Landis' plan, Bruce McGill, who played D-Day, had the piano at the hotel accommodating the cast^note save for John Belushi, who was roomed at a separate house in the suburbs in order to keep him away from alcohol and drugs moved to his room and held late night parties with the other Delta actors; Mark Metcalf, who played Niedermeyer, had his room changed to the one above McGill's so that the noise and resulting sleep loss would keep him in a bad mood for filming.
  • When Bluto takes Charming Guy's guitar and smashes it, the scene was completely improvised from the script. The terrified reaction from the actors is genuine.
• Executive Meddling: Various. Universal President Ned Tanen insisted the Road Trip sequence be cut because he worried it could start race riots. Landis showed the clip to Richard Pryor, who wrote to the executive "Ned, Animal House is fucking funny and white people are crazy - Richard."
• Follow the Leader: Mad Maker's King Frat which was even promoted as a direct sequel in some markets.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Several of the scenes with Bluto, such as the part where he piles on food and when he smashes the guitar, were improvised by John Belushi.
• Hypothetical Casting:
  • Chevy Chase was originally asked to play the role of Eric "Otter" Stratton. He turned it down in order to star in Foul Play. John Landis insisted on casting unknown dramatic actors instead of established comedians and takes credit for subtly discouraging Chase by describing the film as an "ensemble".
  • Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd were also pursued for the roles of Boon and D-Day, respectively, but they were busy with Saturday Night Live. In fact, the role of D-Day was based on Aykroyd.
  • Brian Doyle-Murray was the original choice for Hoover.
  • If John Belushi turned down the role of Bluto, the next choice would've been Meat Loaf.
  • Landis's first choices for Dean and Mrs, Wormer were Jack Webb and Kim Novak. Webb declined because he felt the role of Dean Wormer was poking fun at his straight-laced, law-and-order image.
• Hostility on the Set: Harold Ramis clashed with John Landis after the latter was brought on as the film's director (He and Doug Kenney were planning on having Ivan Reitman direct, but the studio refused due to Reitman's inexperience). Landis proceeded to request script revisions and wouldn't cast Ramis as Boon because he was too old. Ramis resented him for it and refused to take up Landis's offer to be on set in Oregon and have a smaller part. Even after the film became a success, Ramis remained bitter towards him until he was humbled by his own directing experiences on Caddyshack and realized Landis's decisions were for the best.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • According to James Widdoes (Hoover), neither he nor his co-stars: John Belushi (Bluto), Tim Matheson (Otter), Peter Riegert (Boon), Bruce McGill (D-Day), Tom Hulce (Pinto), and Stephen Furst (Flounder), had ever actually belonged to a college fraternity.
  • Mark Metcalf did not actually know how to ride a horse when he was cast as Niedermeyer. He immediately signed up for equestrian classes after he got the part.
• Missing Trailer Scene: A scene featuring Otter driving a girl (played by location scout Katherine Wilson) to the Rainbow Motel on Old Mill Road is seen briefly in the original trailer but was deleted from the film.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: For years, it was accepted as fact that Dan Aykroyd was set to play D-Day, until Saturday Night Live creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels, having already lost John Belushi to the film, threatened to fire Aykroyd from the show if he took the part. Aykroyd eventually revealed in 2023 on the Fly on the Wall podcast that it was actually his own decision to turn down the film so he could keep doing SNL, as he didn't feel comfortable leaving the show without another writer during the time he'd be shooting the film.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • John Belushi's wife, Judy Jacklin (now Judith Belushi-Pisano), is an uncredited extra in several toga party scenes.
  • The female clerk from whom Flounder buys the marbles is actually Stephen Furst's wife, Lorraine Furst.
• Recycled: The Series: Amazingly, someone thought the film would make a good TV series; the extremely short run of the resulting series Delta House on ABC predictably proved that to be wrong.
  • CBS and NBC also did their own series set in frats; neither of them lasted the season.
• The Red Stapler:
  • Originally popular during the '50s and early '60s, fraternity "toga parties" became a huge fad all over again at colleges across America following the release of this film.
  • Fraternities in general also saw a revival after the film's release, which helped them shake off a reputation as obsolete bastions of elite privilege by popularizing the modern Fratbro image of cool, hard-partying libertines.
• Referenced by...:
  • Twisted Sister had the quotes "You're all worthless and weak!" and "A pledge pin? On your uniform?" in the coda of "We're Not Gonna Take It". They then brought in Mark Metcalf to deliver more Neidermeyer-like rants in the videos for that song and "I Wanna Rock" (the latter also featuring Stephen Furst as the school principal).
  • Young Sheldon: In "A Couple Bruised Ribs and a Cereal Box Ghost Detector", this movie is cited by Sheldon as evidence that maturity is not a requirement to attend college. Though he's basing this on the movie poster, as he hasn't seen the actual movie.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Qpid", when the Enterprise crew is sent into the Sherwood Forest from Robin Hood, Geordi, as Alan-a-Dale, tries playing a lute when Worf, as Will Scarlet, suddenly walks over and snatches the lute, smashing it into a tree and saying "Sorry..." afterwards, much like the scene with Bluto and the guitarist at the toga party.
  • In the Kim Possible episode "The Ron Factor" the episode's villain Gemini's agents are named after Greek letters with the letter featured on their uniforms. Ron Stoppable catches one of them spying on him but thinks the agent's Greek letter is his fraternity symbol and chants "Toga! Toga! Toga!"
• Star-Making Role: For John Belushi.
• Stillborn Franchise: A sequel was planned that would take place during the 1969 Summer of Love and involve the Deltas reuniting for Otter's wedding. But when More American Graffiti bombed at the box-office, Universal stalled the project. The project was scrapped for good when John Belushi died in 1982.
• Surprisingly Lenient Censor: Originally, Clorette was supposed to be 16 (in-story — the actress playing her was 19 at the time), but there was concern that Universal Studios and/or the MPAA Ratings Board would object due to statutory rape. The writers decided to change her age to 13, figuring the powers-that-be would reject it and they could come back with 16 as a "compromise." To their shock, the scene met with no objections from anyone.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The mimeograph machine the exams are being duplicated on, more prevalent than photocopiers in 1962. They have largely been out of use in the United States since the early 1980s. Viewers born since then seeing this movie will probably be seeing one for the first time, and perhaps be confused about what it is until they see the copies.
  • Clorette is using an electromechanical cash register of the kind you would have seen in 1962^note albeit with a more late 1970s electronic model visible behind Boon when he's shown
• Throw It In!:
  • When Bluto is sneaking around the campus at night and slips, rolls around and casually stands back up, that was an actual slip-up by John Belushi from the very wet grass on the location. John Landis thought it was the funniest take and used it. And, of course, it's completely in-character for Bluto to do something like that.
  • Verna Bloom said that her scene with Dean Wormer, where she is drunk and he is on the phone with the Mayor, was completely improvised because Landis was unhappy with the dialogue written into the script.
  • Bluto piling up food in his tray during the cafeteria scene was an improvisation by Belushi.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ivan Reitman wanted to direct, but was denied due to his lack of experience.
  • Belushi wanted his character to go with the others on the road trip but Landis refused, arguing that his character was best used sparingly.
  • Harold Ramis wrote the part of Boon for himself to play, but Landis felt Ramis was too old. Ramis was so disappointed that he refused to accept a smaller part Landis offered him. (Ramis was 32, Peter Riegert was 29).
  • Originally, Ramis and Douglas Kenney's idea was titled Laser Orgy Girls, a comedy about Charles Manson as a high school student as an attempt to turn the magazine's high school yearbook parody issue into a film. Matty Simmons told them that the material they wrote was way too raunchy for a high school setting and that instead it would more appropriate if it was a college setting instead. Ramis also incorporated ideas from an earlier treatment he wrote titled Freshman Year based on his experiences in college.
  • In the original script, Flounder and Sissy fall asleep during the toga party—another sign that Flounder wasn't cool. (The scene was apparently never shot, but one publicity still photo shows them snoozing on a couch.)
  • One bit that was written in the original script but never filmed included a parade bust that was destroyed at the climax of the film. The bust was of John F. Kennedy and the gag was Kennedy's head was punctured in the same way the real Kennedy would be shot the next year. Landis cut the idea because he felt the tone of the gag was wrong.
  • The original script called for Flounder to be admitted to the fraternity only if he told one of Larry Kroger's secrets. Flounder blurted out, "He's got spots on his weenie!" Later, during the naming of the pledges, when Larry asks why his Delta name is Pinto, the entire fraternity drunkenly yells, "'Cause you got a spotted dong!"
  • The original script included a scene of "competitive projectile vomiting" which Flounder was to fail at repeatedly. Later, after Flounder throws up "on" Dean Wormer, Boon congratulates Flounder on his technique.
• Write What You Know:
  • Harold Ramis, who co-wrote the film, based some of the pranks on his college experiences at Washington University in St. Louis, specifically when Otter and Boon are hitting golf balls at the ROTC.
  • The film was inspired by co-writer Chris Miller's short stories in National Lampoon, drawn from his experiences in the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth (where he graduated in 1962). "Animal House" was the fraternity's real-life campus nickname, earned after an upper-class member shot a chicken from a second-floor window as some fellow Adelphians chased it with intent to kill and eat it.
• Write Who You Know: D-Day was based on Dan Aykroyd, due to his love of vehicles. In fact, Aykroyd was supposed to play the role, but his SNL commitment prevented it.

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