Trivia / Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

• Actor-Shared Background: Big Russ Thompson says he was captain of the football team in high school. Matt Frewer was the quarterback of his high school team in real life.
• Adored by the Network: You would have been hard pressed to find a time in the early 2000s when the show wasn't being re-ran on Disney Channel.
• Billing Displacement: In the first film, all four of the actors who play the parents are billed above all four of the actors who play the kids, despite the kids getting much more screentime.
• California Doubling:
  • The first movie was set in Fresno, but was shot in Mexico.
  • The TV series was set in Colorado, but filmed in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
• Creator's Oddball: Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna, both best known for making low-budget horror B-movies, writing a Disney family comedy.
• The Danza: Amy O'Neill as Amy Szalinski.
• Dawson Casting: Averted. The kids were played by Amy O'Neill (17), Thomas Wilson Brown (15), Jared Rushton (14), and Robert Oliveri (10). Played straight on the TV series, where Hillary Tuck started playing Amy at 19, although Thomas Dekker was 10 when he started playing Nick.
• Fake American: The Canadian Rick Moranis as American Wayne Szalinski.
• He Also Did:
  • The story was developed by Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and Ed Naha. Gordon and Yuzna are known for the Re-Animator series of horror movies, and Naha, who cowrote the screenplay, also worked heavily in the horror genre, writing, among other films, Dolls (1987) and Troll (1986).
  • In addition, on the TV series, frequent director Tony Dow previously played Wally Cleaver, while John Landis served as executive producer.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: Applies to the television series, which was filmed in Canada and starred Canadian actors.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Diane (Marcia Strassman in the first two movies, Eve Gordon in the third movie).
  • The entire cast, in the TV show. For example, Wayne, portrayed by Rick Moranis in the films, is played by the late Peter Scolari.
  • Within the TV show, Quark, who was a white terrier in the original movie, is inexplicably a larger, black-and-white dog named Matese in season one, and is replaced with another terrier in season two — as a plot point.
  • Due to Robert Oliveri's 1994 retirement, Josh Gad will be playing as Nick in the upcoming Shrunk.
• Playing Against Type:
  • In the series, George Buza played police chief McKenna, instead of his usual "scary biker-thug" role.
  • In the original film, Matt Frewer plays a Jerk Jock father when his typical roles are more like Wayne.
• Release Date Change: The film's original release date was December 1988, but delayed to June 1989.
• Romance on the Set: While filming the TV series, lead actress Barbara Alyn Woods met and fell in love with assistant director John Lind. They married in 1999 and have three daughters, all of whom are also actresses.
• Sleeper Hit: Honey, I Shrunk the Audience was a surprise hit when it opened at Walt Disney World's Epcot park in 1994, running until 2010 there. It was so popular that the Imagination pavilion was re-themed to its "Imagination Institute" setting in 1999, though (thanks to Disney's penny-pinching at the time) it led to a case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! with regards to the Journey Into Imagination dark ride.
  • The original film itself was one, as it unexpectedly grossed over $222 million at the box office.
• Underage Casting:
  • Matt Frewer was only 30 when he played Russ Thompson in the first movie, but appeared older because of his high forehead and gaunt features. The character had two teenage sons, the elder of whom was played by Thomas Wilson Brown, aged 15 during the filming and just 15 years younger than Frewer. Frewer's onscreen wife, Kristine Sutherland, wasn't much older at only 33. Even Rick Moranis was only 35, and had just 18 years on Amy O'Neill, who played his daughter.
  • Eve Gordon was 35 when she appeared as Diane in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. She is twelve years younger than Marcia Strassman (who was 40 when she appeared in the original film), and just 11 years older than Amy O'Neill, who played her character's oldest child. (Luckily for her, both Amy and Nick are absent from Ourselves and a 35-year-old woman is perfectly plausible as the mother of a tweenage son.)
  • Though less extreme than Gordon as the series is set earlier than Ourselves, Barbara Alyn Woods, who played Diane in the series, was also 35 during filming of the first season. She is only sixteen years older than Hillary Tuck, who played Amy.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Stuart Gordon was originally intended to direct the first film, but had to bow out due to illness.
  • The role of Wayne Szalinski was originally written with Chevy Chase in mind due to his popularity in National Lampoon's Vacation, but he was busy with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. John Candy was also offered the role, but he declined and recommended Rick Moranis. Martin Short was also considered.
  • In an early version of the script, there were five kids, one of which died during the sprinkler sequence.
  • Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves was originally slated for a $40 million budget, which got cut down to $7 million when Disney decided to try it as its first live-action direct-to-video release.
  • Raúl Juliá was originally cast as Nigel Channing in Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, but his declining health lead him to pull out at the last minute, with Eric Idle stepping in after a chance meeting with Marcia Strassman at her hotel.
• Working Title: The Teeny-Weenies (The film's script was written under this name), Grounded and (favored by Disney) The Big Backyard.

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