The film was initially banned in Finland.
The story of the original 1951 "The Thing From Another World" takes place in the North Pole, and the story of the film takes place in the South Pole.
Donald Pleason was the first person to play Blair, but he missed the film due to a conflict of appointments.
In the film, there is a dog actor named Jed, who is a hybrid of wolf and husky. He never looks at the camera, the rail car, or the crew.
In order to create a frozen polar scene, the interior of the Los Angeles studio was cooled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, when the outside temperature was 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
There are no female characters in the film. Originally, there was only one female actor in the crew, but she was found pregnant during filming, and she eventually withdrew from the crew.
The film is the first part of John Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy". The other two are "The Return of the Demons" in 1987 and "The Shaking Black Hole" in 1994.
The title of the film imitates "The Thing From Another World" directed by Howard Hawkes in 1951.
The piranha in the film comes from special effects, and its petals are made up of 12 canine tongues and rows of canine teeth.
Director John Carpenter’s wife Adriana Barbio provided the voice for McCreddy’s computer in the film.
When shooting Norris’s head and body part, special effects artist Rob Burtin used extremely flammable materials in the head and neck model, and for consistency, director John Capone I decided that some flames were needed in the surrounding scenes, but I didn’t expect that the room was already full of combustible gas. When they struck a match, the whole room burned. Fortunately, everyone was unscathed and it cost Rob Burting. The special effects model made in 7 months was ruined.
The video of the Norwegian finding a spaceship under the ice is from 1951's "The Thing From Another World".
The wind in the polar regions was recorded in the desert.
Carpenter filmed a happy ending for the film, in which the protagonist escaped the entanglement of the "grotesque". But this ending has never been screened.
