Trivia / Critters

• Billing Displacement: As with E. T., Dee Wallace (the mom) gets top-billing in the first film. Veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh also takes second billing, with young Scott Grimes in the lead role gets billed fourth.
• California Doubling: The first film was shot in Kansas, where the story takes place. However, while Critters 2 also takes place in the same area, it was shot near Los Angeles.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazil: The Hour of the Creatures
  • Hungary: Horrors
  • Mexico: Strange Creatures
  • Romania: Monsters
• Creator Backlash:
  • Mick Garris, director of Critters 2, often refers to the film as a punchline. However, he did celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movie in 2018 on his podcast.
  • Producer Rupert Harvey wasn't satisfied with how Critters 3 turned out, stating that it was much more darker in the original script and that his busy schedule during filming kept him from doing what he wanted to do with the movie.
• Dawson Casting: April, who's supposed to be in high school in the first movie, was played by a then 23-year old Nadine Van der Velde.
• Dueling Movies: Not to Gremlins, but to Munchies.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Finland: Critters: Midnight Gnawers
  • Germany: Critters: You Are There!
  • Portugal: Critters: Space Beings
  • Spain: Critters: Watch Out! They Bite!
• Making Use of the Twin: Christopher and Joseph Cousins alternate as Johnny McFadden.
• The Other Darrin:
  • M. Emmet Walsh is replaced as Harv by Barry Corbin in Critters 2.
  • Meta-examples: Warden Zanti was played by an actor in heavy makeup in the first film, but appears briefly in the second as a stop-motion figure voiced by a female actor. The default "nothing face" forms of the bounty hunters are also portrayed by different actors in the first and second films.
  • Corey Burton voiced the Crites in the first film, with the second, third and fourth films not crediting who did the Krite voices. In the fifth film Critters Attack!, the Crite voices are now done by Steve Blum.
• Sequel Gap: The fifth film Critters Attack! was released in 2019, 27 years after the previous film Critters 4.
• Sleeper Hit: When the first film was initially released, the results were a bit disappointing, only opening at sixth and dropping heavily week two. However, word of mouth caught up, and during its run it kept maintaining around that spot, and even after dropping out of the top 20 in one week, it bounced back to top ten in the following. The legs it held on were so surprising that the studio bought more theaters than they planned near the end of its run, and it ended up making four times its budget back.
• What Could Have Been: In the original written ending, the Browns house would've been completely destroyed and not rebuilt. Studio execs did not like it and asked for the ending that we got, which producer Rupert Harvey wasn't happy about.
  • Cary Elwes mentioned on the commentary for the uncut edition DVD of Saw 3D that he passed on the role of Josh in Critters 3 that went to a future star.
• Written by Cast Member: Don Keith Opper, who plays Charlie McFadden, also co-wrote the film.