Gremlins/Trivia

Both Movies

 * Actor Allusion: The Puttermans are played by Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph, cast as a married couple specifically because of their frequent acting collaborations in Roger Corman movies.
 * Follow the Leader: There were oodles of Gremlins-like creature features in between the two films, including Ghoulies and unfortunately Hobgoblins (the movie Critters was not following the lead of Gremlins, as it had been in the works before Gremlins went into production).
 * Hey, It's That Guy!:
 * Clamp Enterprises are run by Lionel Luthor and his assistant the Doctor (no, not that one).
 * Speaking of Doctor, Saruman/Count Dooku is the amoral scientist playing with genetics!
 * Raymond Cruz plays the delivery guy in Gremlins 2.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!:
 * The Brain Gremlin is Felix Unger.
 * Gizmo is voiced by Howie Mandel and Stripe by Frank Welker.
 * What Could Have Been: The entire concept of these movies was brought about from Spielberg's unproduced script loosely based on the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter. The idea was eventually seperated into three movie. This one being the third. The other two? ET the Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Gremlins 2

 * Actor Allusion: During the Bat Gremlin's transformation, stereotypical vampire music starts playing while the camera zooms in on Christopher Lee's reaction shot.
 * Adaptation Name Change: The Brain Gremlin is called "Mr. Glasses" in the novelization.
 * Doing It for the Art: Legendary Oscar-winning special effects artist Rick Baker was convinced to work on the sequel by letting him completely redesign the mogwai/gremlins, including making the new hybrids.
 * Playing Against Type: John Glover is best known for playing villains and changed Clamp to more friendly because he disliked being exclusively cast as bad guys.
 * Unintentional Period Piece: It shows how it's a 1990 film with references to Batman, The Phantom of the Opera, Donald Trump and Marla Maples' affair, colorization jokes and so on.
 * What Could Have Been: The original script of The New Batch featured Randall Peltzer making a Cameo at the end of the movie with his latest invention -- a wetsuit-type device to prevent Gizmo from ever getting wet again.
 * Also, the original script called for the Brain Gremlin to wear a black tuxedo and tie while singing "New York, New York" as a further homage to Frank Sinatra. it was scrapped.