Trivia / Muppets Haunted Mansion

• Deleted Scene: As told by Kirk Thatcher in an interview with the Muppet History podcast, a scene with the Pop-Up Ghosts was shot, but cut for not moving the story along.
• Development Gag:
  • At one point Gonzo says that you could open up his head, poke around, and you wouldn't find any fear, to which the Ghost Host replies that this could be arranged. As noted below, there was originally a scene where it was.
  • The same scene is referenced in Bunsen and Beaker's cameo, where Bunsen mutters about the budget keeping him and Beaker from getting bigger parts to play.
• In Memoriam: The special's credits feature a brief tribute to Ed Asner. Given how it lists it in the same credits roll for the other cameos, it's clear that this was originally just his credit before being edited into an In Memoriam for him due to passing so shortly before the special's release.
• Posthumous Credit: Ed Asner cameos as a ghost in the special. Sadly, he died in August 2021, over a month before the special premiered.
• Production Posse: Once again, Danny Trejo makes a cameo in another Muppets project, following Muppets Most Wanted, The Muppets Take the Bowl, and Muppets Now.
• Reality Subtext: Dave Goelz is the very last remaining original Muppet performer, with all the rest either dead or just so heavily in retirement that he'll almost certainly never work with them again. When Gonzo is subjected to Rapid Aging and watching his friends move on without him, it's hard not to pick up on just a bit of connection to his performer's situation. Even within the short, his old sidekick of Rizzo the Rat has been replaced by Pepe the Prawn.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Part of why Gonzo and Pepe got the lead roles was because their respective performers had the greatest availability (Dave Goelz (Gonzo) and Bill Barretta (Pepe) are two of the only Disney Muppet performers who don't also have obligations to Sesame Street, which is shot on the other side of the country). Goelz and Barretta have also worked on recent projects with The Jim Henson Company, but Barretta's most recent Henson project was The Happytime Murders, while Goelz recently provided the voices of Boober and Uncle Travelling Matt on the Apple TV+ series Fraggle Rock: Rock On (characters he performed in the original series) and later reprised those roles in Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.
• Saved from Development Hell: It apparently took the director and Muppets veteran Kirk Thatcher 30 years to finally get a Muppet Halloween special made. One of the previous drafts was turned into the PlayStation game Muppet Monster Adventure.
• What Could Have Been:
  • As told by Kirk Thatcher on the Barretta Brothers vodcast, one scene was planned early in production involving Bunsen, Beaker, Dr. Phil van Neuter and Mulch in a lab examining the inside of Gonzo's head. This scene was ultimately scrapped due to time and budget constraints and the characters were placed elsewhere in the special.
  • "Life Hereafter" was written under the name "Be Our Ghost", and it was a more direct parody of the song from Beauty and the Beast. Later in development, it was reworked into its own song, but several lyrical references remain.
  • Bean Bunny was discussed to make a cameo appearance in the special. However, the puppet at the time had severely deteriorated to the point of scraps and would have needed to be rebuilt, which Kirk Thatcher felt was too much of an effort for what would have been a small cameo, so he didn't make the final cut.
    • Gags involving other characters such as Bobby Benson and Thog were also planned but didn’t make the final cut.
• Word of God:
  • The special's Haunted Mansion, while mostly identical on the inside, features a new exterior. According to Kirk Thatcher in interviews, the special's Mansion shares an architect with Phantom Manor and the two in-park Haunted Mansions in-universe.
  • On the Barretta Brothers vodcast, Bill Barretta and Kelly Younger went into more detail about how the "sympathetic vibrations" work. Since Gonzo and Pepe are both performers, they see the ghosts putting on a variety show, but had another person come in, they would see scenarios related to their own memories, i.e. one's childhood home.

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