E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial/Trivia
- Billing Displacement: Dee Wallace as Elliott's mother Mary.
- Cast the Expert: The doctors are real doctors. Spielberg mentioned that this was necessary as they would be better at rapidly spitting out terminology that required years of medical school to lean than any actor who'd been simply given a briefing on it. Humorously, this lead to some competition amongst local doctors who all wanted to be in the movie.
- Colbert Bump: Sales of Reese's Pieces candy skyrocketed after their inclusion in the film.
- Cross-Dressing Voices: Played straight with E.T. in the original version and in the Japanese dub, but averted in the Mexican Spanish dub.
- Deleted Scene: Harrison Ford filmed a scene as the principal of Elliot's school, set after he frees the frogs, which Spielberg cut because he felt Ford's presence was too distracting.
- Enforced Method Acting: Filmed in chronological order so that the cast could become genuinely attached to the E.T. character. Young Drew Barrymore, in particular, took it the hardest: she was genuinely frightened when she walked in on Eliot with E.T. in his room and in tears during his Disney Death scene.
- Old Shame: Steven Spielberg came to regret the edits made to the film for the 2002 re-release.
- What Could Have Been: The first choice to play Gertie? Juliette Lewis. Her father made her turn down the role and Barrymore was cast instead.
- Stan Winston turned down the opportunity to work on E.T.. He would regret doing so.
- The book "E.T. from Concept to Classic" features many plot points and scenes cut from the script. One subplot from an early draft was to have a rival to Elliott named Lance who wanted to expose E.T. The spaceship was going to land in a parking lot, but it was changed to a forest because that sounded more magical, amongst many others.