The Italian title translates into The Man Who Escaped the Future.
The Chinese title translates into 500 years later.
Creator Killer: This film was the first project of the first incarnation of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. Unfortunately, the executives of Warner Bros. hated this film so much that they cancelled their support of Coppola's company and demanded all the money they loaned him immediately, which drove the company out of business.
Dyeing for Your Art: The script required almost the entire cast to shave their heads, either completely bald or with a buzz cut. As a publicity stunt, several actors were filmed having their first haircuts/shaves at unusual venues, with the results used in a promotional featurette titled Bald: The Making of THX 1138. Many of the shaven-headed extras seen in the film were recruited from the nearby addiction recovery program Synanon.
Executive Meddling: Warner Bros. inexplicably cut 5 minutes from the original theatrical release, much to the displeasure of George Lucas, who has stated that "Whether it's five minutes shorter or longer, it didn't change the movie one bit". WB did reinstate the cut footage when they rereleased the film in 1977 to cash in on Lucas's newfound celebrity from Star Wars. Of course, known prints from the original run indicate that it could've just been five seconds that were cut completely, and the only other change was in the reordering of certain scenes leading up to THX's imprisonment.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: The original theatrical cut has never been made available on home video. The 1977 cut is only slightly better, being only available on VHS and laser videodisc. The Director's Cut, meanwhile, is the print currently in circulation since having been released on DVD in 2004. While a late October 2017 TCM broadcast indicated that the 1977 cut would resurface via use of the reissue trailer from the period, Executive Meddling on the part of George Lucas appears to have ensured the Director's Cut was broadcast instead.
Referenced by...: The scene in the prison in which a mechanical cop beats a man with his baton is sampled at the beginning of Nine Inch Nails' song "Mr. Self Destruct" from their album The Downward Spiral.
The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Completed in 1969, the film was not released until 1971 due to Warner Brothers' dissatisfaction with it.
George Lucas' original plan was to shoot the film in Japan, but Francis Ford Coppola could not afford a budget large enough to take the entire production to Japan. As a result, the film was shot in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Alien Exodus, a Star Wars novel that was planned but cancelled in the '90s, would have revealed that the film was in fact part of the Star Wars universe. The first humans in Star Wars would have been refugees from the backstory of THX 1138, who escaped the descent of the modern world into the movie's oppressive society by fleeing into space and being accidentally drawn into the distant past.
