Recursive Adaptation: The Mask: Official Movie Adaptation (comics -> movie -> comics) and Adventures of the Mask, which was based on the animated series (comics -> movie -> TV series -> comics).
What Could Have Been: There were plans for a stage play based on the tie-in children's book "The Night Before ChristMASK" but those plans never happened.
Bonus Material: Vol. 2 of the Omnibus included the short stories of Dark Horse Presents and A Decade of Dark Horse compilations apart of the main series.
Early-Bird Release: The first mini-series is considered this; part of the Mayhem magazine as one of the new comic books Dark Horse made was later compiled as The Mask #0.
Franchise Killer: The Son of the Mask movie was why Dark Horse stopped making The Mask comic books. Or at least until 2014's Itty Bitty Mask.
Itty Bitty Mask, as well the Itty Bitty series for Dark Horse, was made by Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, the creators of DC's Tiny Titans.
What Could Have Been: A planned interquel would fill in the time between Kathy getting the Mask by killing Ipkiss in The Mask #0 and the first series, but it didn't see the light.
Yes, that is Jim Carrey singing "Cuban Pete". (However, that's not Cameron Diaz singing in the nightclub, as anyone who has seen My Best Friend's Wedding can attest.) Both Carrey and Diaz did their dancing; Jim even helped choreograph the "Cuban Pete" number.
He also lives up to his nickname "Rubber Face" when Stanley first becomes The Mask. The film used CGI to distort the mask on his face, but the wacky, cartoonish faces? All Jim Carrey.
The prologue, in which Leif Ericson ended up in what would later be America just because it was far enough away for him to get rid of the mask. "Leave [naming the place] to the Italians. This land is now cursed."
Peggy's death after betraying Stanley, where Dorian (who has the Mask on) hurls Peggy into a printing press before a series of red-stained newspapers get printed with a fake story reporting her death. Because of that, Peggy disappears from the plot after getting her money and didn't get what she deserved. Russell removed it because of fears it would be too dark for the film. Due to this, she became a regular in the Animated Adaptation.
An extended scene concerning The Mask's confrontation with a street gang.
An early workprint of the movie can be found online, with more extended/deleted scenes not available on the DVD. One scene shows Stanley getting dropped off by his apartment after finding The Mask in the Edge City river and gets immediately confronted by the same street gang that he would see again shortly as The Mask. The gang's leader asks Stanley for the time so he can steal his watch, foreshadowing how Stanley would soon get payback on him as The Mask when asked the same question.
The workprint also makes Tina sound more cynical than the final cut; added lines clarify that she hates that Dorian forced her to record the bank's security in the opening scene but did so because I Did What I Had to Do (and tells Stanley this in Landfill Park). This dialogue would have made her later speech to Stanley at the jail have a more dramatic weight behind it, and it would have been more evident that she had a more romantic view of life by the ending.
In Spain, the film received two dubs: one for theatrical releases with Luis Posada as Jim Carrey's voice and another for airplane screenings (yes, that is a practice, although not very well-known) with Antonio García Moral as Carrey. The thing is that when the film had its first Spanish DVD release, for unknown reasons, they used the airplane screening dub for the Spanish audio track, which was met with negative feedback. By the time the film got a Blu-ray release, and the distributor used the theatrical dub keeping the airplane dub for the DVD release. Curiously enough, both dubs feature Dionisio Macías in very different roles: Kellaway in the theatrical dub and Dorian in the airplane screening dub.
Brazil has two dubs: the original from São Paulo found in most home video releases. The Rio de Janeiro dub was first available on the over-the-air broadcast, and one can find it on Netflix. Many fans prefer the latter, mainly because most of its voice actors returned for the cartoon.
Executive Meddling: Very surprisingly inverted if one listens to the DVD commentaries/behind-the-scenes material. Chuck Russell — director of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors— stated that New Line was interested in developing The Mask along the lines of the comic books; this would have become, according to Russell, "the next Freddy Krueger". But, he noted, that draft after draft of the more comics-faithful adaptation did not work. So, he fought valiantly to make the film a comedy; the Cuban Pete sequence is one of the few elements that survived until the final cut.
Fake American: Canadian-born Jim Carrey plays Stanley Ipkiss.
Focus Group Ending: A rather minor one in this instance, but still ultimately an improvement. In the original ending, it was only Charlie who dove into the water after the Mask, but test audiences had grown to love Milo so much that they wanted him to get it.
An original script idea was for Stanley Ipkiss to meet the street gang that he later encounters as The Mask earlier in the film, getting mugged and having his watch stolen, explaining why when his landlady asks him if he knows what time it is, he says, "Actually, no."
In a deleted scene from the extended workprint, Dorian says to Tina, "Nobody ever kissed you like Dorian Tyrell." Had this scene stayed in the final cut, that line would’ve become a Meaningful Echo when Tina tricks him into taking off the Mask.
Promoted Fanboy: Of this film, that is. The Weeknd has said that this movie was the first he ever saw and inspired him to pursue a career in audio-visual art. As fate would have it, upon attaining stardom he ended up moving to a residence not far from Jim Carrey's own and they became good neighbors! He would cast Carrey as the DJ who narrates the 2022 Concept AlbumDawn FM, and in the ending of the video for "Out of Time", Carrey places a blank full-face mask on Abel's own as an Actor Allusion.
Spared by the Cut: Peggy Brandt sells out Stanley to Dorian, foolishly believing he wouldn't hurt Stanley despite knowing he's a mobster. In the theatrical cut, she disappears from the movie entirely after Dorian captures Stanley. In the original version, however, Dorian throws her into the printing press and kills her, commenting beforehand that she'll be front page news — and so she is: The papers that emerge from the press have suspiciously red ink, a photo of her screaming, and a headline announcing she died in a bizarre accident.
The Mask pulling out a condom in the balloon-making scene was added by Jim Carrey.
He also improvised the heart-shaped cigarette puff (and arrow shot from his nose) during the Frenchman scene, making it a rare instance of an ad-libbed special effect!
The movie was originally going to be exactly like the comic. Executive Meddling prevented that from happening because Jim Carrey was playing the title role and the scriptwriter found that a faithful adaptation wouldn't work.
In one of the earlier drafts of the script, the Coco Bongo was originally called the Monkey's Paw. The club was called the Valhalla Club in another draft.
There were plans for an actual sequel (notSon of the Mask, mind you). One idea was that Lt. Kellaway finds the mask, dons it, and becomes the next villain. Furthermore, Nintendo Power actually had a contest that whoever won could appear in the film as an extra. They Lampshaded this in their final issue.
NP: To whoever won that contest: Sorry.
At one point, the studio worked with the idea of making the sequel about a woman (possibly either Peggy or Tina) wearing the Mask.
The original script ended with Charlie Schumaker wearing the mask.
One of the earlier drafts ended with Mrs. Peenman putting on the mask and chasing after Charlie.
Another early script draft included Stanley as The Mask going through a Costume-Test Montage, performing an Instant Costume Change to try out each one. His costumes include a tacky Don Johnson -style outfit, a Totally Radical '90s rapper-style outfit (which he dismisses as for "buttonheads"), and Calvin Klein underwear ("Marky Mark, eat your heart out.") before settling with the signature banana-yellow zoot suit. The animated series used the idea of The Mask going through a costume change as a way for The Mask to wear something appropriate for any situations he finds himself in.
Black Pearl was set to work on a Sega Genesis version of the SNES game, but this never came about. They later specified that the SNES version took longer to develop than planned, resulting in it coming out a year after the film. Creating a Genesis version would have taken an additional year, and everyone realized that releasing a video game tie-in to a movie over two years after the movie came out would be pointless. The lead programmer added that a level set in a carnival ended up cut.
An early screenplay from 1991 had different characters like Stanley's girlfriend, Kathleen Berman (inspired by his girlfriend Kathy in the comics), Detective Mitchell "Mitch" Gallagher, and Scully and Vito Vitelli, who later became Dorian and Niko, respectively. The 1991 script by Mark Verheiden had these in abundance. Such moments include Scully massacring a wedding reception at Vitelli's estate, emerging drenched in blood, and groping Kathleen while wearing the mask.
Kenner's tie-in action figure line was going to include Walter based on his comic book appearance. The line was cancelled before it could be produced.
Acting for Two: In the episode "Split Personality", the Mask and Stanley share the same body when the mask splits in half, so Rob Paulsen spends most of the episode conversing between the two.
"Flight as a Feather" never aired on Fox Family, the American versions of Cartoon Network or Boomerang (the overseas versions have aired it), and CBS for its infamous sequence with Cookie BaBoom.
Dueling Works: This show and Freakazoid!. They both ran from 1995-1997, and they both feature mild-mannered everyguys taking on an insane yet heroic persona. Freakazoid was a little Denser and Wackier than The Mask because there weren't really any straight characters (except maybe Cosgrove, and even he's The Comically Serious). It also didn't see nearly as much success, unfortunately.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: There are only three VHS releases (back when VCRs were prevalent) and the two-part episode "The Mask is Always Greener on the Other Side" was released on DVD along with The Mask around the time that Son of the Mask was released in theaters. Besides that, the entire series hasn't been released officially on DVD (it was announced that the show would see a DVD release in 2013 thanks to Shout! Factory, but as of 2016, the set never materialized with no word on why). All is not lost, though — most of the episodes are available via torrent downloading and on video websites like YouTube and Dailymotion. The show also reran on Cartoon Network and Boomerang channels in the UK and Australia. On April 10, 2018, Warner Archive released the first season on DVD, and the series has since been available on iTunes and Amazon Video.
Stanley/The Mask is played here by Rob Paulsen, who described it as "playing Jim Carrey for less money".
Skilit was voiced by Jason Marsden in his first appearance in "Shadow of a Skilit" and by Benny Grant in all his subsequent ones.
Recycled: The Series: A cartoon adaptation of a PG-13 Jim Carrey movie (two similar series that fit this description include the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective animated series — with which this show had a Crossover — and the short-lived cartoon adaptation of Dumb and Dumber)
Ben Stein reprised his role as Dr. Neuman, the only actor from the movie to do so.
In the French dub, Emmanuel Curtil (Jim Carrey's official French dub voice actor) voices Stanley Ipkiss/The Mask, reprising his role from the movie.
The European Spanish dub had almost all the voice actors reprising their roles from the film, including Luis Posada as Stanley Ipkiss / The Mask. The sole exception was Doyle, who Joaquín Muñoz voiced instead of Miguel Rey.
The Brazilian dub brought everyone from the Rio dub back, except Peggy. And Dr. Neuman when he appeared.
Unfinished Episode: The writers had plans for an episode involving the deceased spirits of Dorian Tyrell and crime boss Niko to return to Edge City and engage in a mob war from beyond the grave, with further plans to have actor Peter Greene return to reprise his role as Dorian. The show's cancellation ultimately canned this idea.
Wag the Director: According to Rob Paulsen, executives initially pressed him to try and perfectly mimic Jim Carrey's performance. After a pep talk from Tim Curry, Paulsen told the executives something along the lines of "If you want Jim Carrey, you can hire Jim Carrey. But you can't afford Jim Carrey, so let me do this role my way." Following this, the executives relented.
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