Animal House/Trivia

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• Actor Allusion: Stephen Furst (Flounder) transfers to the University of Kansas and survives a nuclear apocalypse. It's unknown whether or not his former pledges survived.
• Career Resurrection: For Elmer Bernstein, whose career was mostly spent scoring TV shows in the 1970's (a far cry from The Ten Commandments and The Magnificent Seven). His work on the film later made him a go-to composer for many popular comedies (such as Airplane!, Stripes and Ghostbusters) and he became John Landis's Associated Composer.
  • In fact, Landis actually knew Bernstein when he was a kid, and had actually gone to school with his son, Peter.
• The Danza: John Belushi as John "Bluto" Blutarsky.
  • Subverted, however, with John Vernon's character Vernon Wormer, the dean of the college. According to John Landis, his first choice for the role was Jack Webb, who turned it down because he felt that the film was making fun of his straight-laced, law-and-order image. Webb, however, was not averse to poking fun at himself, and he did just that in a famous sketch on The Tonight Show.
• Dawson Casting: Most of the cast. For example, Mark Metcalf (Niedermayer) was 32.
  • Subverted by the casting of Kevin Bacon, who was actually of college age at the time.
• Defictionalization: DeWayne Jessie, the actor who played Otis Day, changed his name and recorded with the Knights.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • When not filming, John Landis purposely prevented the actors playing Deltas from interacting with the actors playing Omegas so that the "enemies" wouldn't end up bonding with each other (the Delta actors were even brought to the set a few weeks earlier than the Omegas to achieve this).
  • As a mark of the success of Landis' plan, Bruce McGill, who played D-Day, had the piano at the hotel accommodating the cast moved to his room and held late night parties with the other Delta actors; Mark Metcalf, who played Niedermeyer, had his room changed to the one above McGill's so that the noise and resulting sleep loss would keep him in a bad mood for filming.
• Executive Meddling: Various. Universal President Ned Tanen insisted the Road Trip sequence be cut because he worried it could start race riots. Landis showed the clip to Richard Pryor, who wrote to the executive "Ned, Animal House is fucking funny and white people are crazy - Richard."
• Hey, It's That Guy! :
  • D-Day is played by veteran character actor Bruce McGill.
  • Flounder is Stephen Furst, later a regular on St. Elsewhere and Babylon 5.
  • Tom Hulce (Pinto) would go on to an Academy Award nomination for the title role in Amadeus, and later voiced and sang the title role in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
  • Tim Matheson played Otter, and is pretty recognizable now as Vice President Hoynes and "Dead" Larry Sizemore.
  • Mark Metcalf, who played Niedermeyer, did his yelling schtick in the beginning of Twisted Sister's famous "I Wanna Rock" video, and later, albeit under heavy makeup played Kool-Aid Mouth The Master.
  • And the same actress who played Mrs. Wormer was also the Virgin Mary.
  • And, of course, Kevin Bacon.
  • Boon dated Marion and later, suspected Jim Carrey of being a green-faced menace to Edge City in The Mask.
• Recycled: the Series: Delta House.
• Throw It In: When Bluto is sneaking around the campus at night and slips, rolls around and casually stands back up, that was an actual slip-up by Belushi from the very wet grass on the location. The director thought it was the funniest take and used it.
• What Could Have Been: Dan Aykroyd turned down the role of D-Day.
  • Bill Murray turned down the role of Boon.
  • Chevy Chase was originally going to be Otter, but had to cancel due to a schedule conflict.
  • If John Belushi turned down the role of Bluto, the next choice would've been Meat Loaf.