Trivia / Child's Play 2

• Actor-Shared Background: The role of foster mother Joanne Simpson reflects on her portrayer Jenny Agutter's real life charitable services that involves helping children, which includes the Diabetic Association and NCH Action for Children, a charity which provides home and other help for homeless children, with which Agutter has been involved for five years. The role also reflected on Agutter's real life aspects that were recent at the time she filmed her role as Joanne including Agutter's then-latest marriage and her expectance of becoming a mother for the first time to her then-unborn child Jonathan who was later born on the same year Child's Play 2 was theatrically released, which is considered ironic as Agutter's character in the film was unable to conceive children of her own while Agutter herself was able to do so.
• Billing Displacement: Jenny Agutter is given second billing, despite her role to be nothing pivotal and more of an irrelevant Innocent Bystander who ends up an Asshole Victim after she shortly Took a Level in Jerkass by finally taking Phil's somewhat inconsiderate recommendation to send Andy back to the orphanage, while Christine Elise, who plays Kyle and is given fourth billing, is the true Supporting Protagonist next to Andy. Same goes to Phil, who's given third billing, but is not as important as Kyle's or Andy's roles and he ends up an Asshole Victim as well.
  • However, the second and third billings of the Simpsons are made more sense in the television cut, due to the theatrical cut gave them little screen time to make Andy and Kyle the focal points, while the television cut gives them more screen time to a point their roles are equivalent to being Decoy Protagonists (akin to Karen Barclay's role in the first film as a parent initially concerned for her child and why he blames the murders on a seemingly inanimate doll before realizing the child was telling the truth all along), until they get bumped off and the points of view shifts to Kyle and back to Andy.
• Completely Different Title: In France, this film was aired as Chucky, the Blood Doll.
• Corpsing: Overlapping with Blooper, but at the split second just as Chucky trips Phil, the latter's actor Gerrit Graham is shown to be smirking in the shot just as he falls before being hanged upside down, it seems Gerrit is enjoying his character's death scene. It was even shown in previews to this installment.
• Creator Backlash: Jenny Agutter regrets having done the film (likely due to how her character was Demoted to Extra in the theatrical cut, while the deleted scenes that were later Re-Cut for TV fleshed out her character more along with her co-star Gerrit Graham's character), saying "It was much less than the script I read."
• The Danza: Grace Poole, played by Grace Zabriskie. And as far as the 2021 series is concerned, Mr. Sullivan's first name is revealed to be Haskell, which happens to be the surname of his actor Peter Haskell, while Miss Kettlewell's first name is revealed to be Elizabeth, which the later last four letters happens to be the first name of her actress Beth Grant.
• Dawson Casting: Kyle is supposed to be a teenager either 15 or 16, but her actress Christine Elise at the time of the movie's release was really 25.
• Deleted Role: Chris Sarandon was originally going to reprise his role as Det. Mike Norris from the first film, but his scenes were cut from the film due to budgetary issues.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The novelization is based on a late but not final draft of the script, resulting in some dialogue changes and the movie's original ending being included.
• Fake American: British actress Jenny Agutter as American foster mother Joanne Simpson.
• The Other Darrin: In the Brazillian dub, Renato Márcio replaces Júlio Chaves as the voice of Chucky.
• Playing Against Type: In genre films before, Jenny Agutter is known for playing Ms. Fanservice characters, however, due to Agutter around the time likely undergoing a midlife crisis, this role was part of a mark of the beginning for her to play conservative characters who can count as the Token Wholesomes on her acting resume.
• Production Posse: In a reversal sense, Gerrit Graham playing the Obstructive Bureaucrat foster father in the second film would be his first collaboration with the franchise's producer David Kirschner and a couple years later would work with him and the franchise's distributor Universal again on a short-lived television animated series of the An American Tail franchise, Fievel's American Tails, as The Other Darrin for John Cleese's character from An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.
• Refitted for Sequel: The death of the teacher and the factory finale were both intended to be featured in the original.
• Troubled Production: A relatively modest budget for Child's Play 2 rocketed upwards during filming, both due to the crew on the non-studio(Universal acquired the film via negative pickup), non-union production deciding to unionize due to a very high crew turnover rate, and due to John Lafia's perfectionist tendencies; the director created storyboards for the entire film and went well over time and budget for F/X shots, such as Chucky emerging from Miss Kettlewell's classroom closet. Less problematic but still an issue was Alex Vincent's inability to act scared of Chucky after spending literal days around the animatronic puppets; Lafia had to scare Vincent himself to get a reaction during a climactic scene.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original script had an opening scene of a court hearing dealing with the events of the previous film. Catherine Hicks was to reprise her role of Karen Barclay in this sequence, but it was cut before filming began. Elements of this scene appeared in a similar courtroom scene in Curse of Chucky.
  • Don Mancini stated in an interview that a locker scene was originally supposed to be in the film but it was cut and used in Bride of Chucky.
  • Charles Grodin, Jeffrey Jones (who would later co-star with Chucky's actor Brad Dourif in Deadwood) and Tim Matheson were considered for Phil Simpson. Matheson would later play Henry Kaslan in Child's Play (2019). Grodin would go on to play a similar curmudgeon Fantasy-Forbidding Father with reluctance to adopt anyone or anything into his family in Beethoven two years later and also by Universal.
  • Veronica Cartwright was considered for the part of Joanne before Jenny Agutter was chosen, following her performances as Nancy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Lambert in Alien.
  • Karen Black and Mary Steenburgen were considered for Grace Poole.
  • Jan Merlin and Peter Mark Richman (following his performance as Charles McCullough a year earlier in another Villain-Based Franchise Slasher Movie installment Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) were considered for the role of Play Pals CEO Mr. Sullivan.
  • Joyce Van Patten was considered for the role Miss Kettlewell as a follow-up to her then-recent past role as a similar character of the despicably overbearing My Beloved Smother Dorothy Mann in another Slasher Movie Monkey Shines.
  • Originally, Phil and Joanne were named George & Mildred, makes sense considering the Simpsons wear trying to affect an ideal appearance of a Nuclear Family stereotype and those latter forenames are usually associated as typically stereotypical first names for parents in media.
  • If the deleted scenes that are edited in for television are to be believed, then the Simpsons were meant to be the Decoy Protagonist pair of the second film with much more screen time (also making their portrayers' second and third billings more sense then in the theatrical cut where they were Demoted to Extra) and Phil was to be framed as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who loves and cares for his wife for their issues as a result of their seasoned fostering duties despite being an Obstructive Bureaucrat Jerkass to One towards Andy, but wasn't an Asshole Victim when Chucky kills him.

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