Beetlejuice Beetlejuice/Trivia

* Tim Burton has said that this film would only be made if Michael Keaton would return to reprise his role. Keaton said in March of 2014 that this is the only sequel he's interested in doing.
* Winona Ryder had only one condition when she first met Stranger Things (2016)creators Matt and Ross Duffer for a role they wanted her to play on Netflix: If "Beetlejuice 2" ever got off the ground, they'd have to let her take a break from the series to film it. They agreed.
* Michael Keaton said he and Tim Burton were particularly interested in doing a film that wasn't too technology-heavy. They wanted it to have the same practical effects of the original.
* Tim Burton stated he was done making movies until he directed the first four episodes of Netflix hit Wednesday (2022), which prompted him to reassess the original Beetlejuice and its potential for a sequel.
* Geena Davis confirmed she does not appear in Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice during a interview with ET. "No, I'm not. I'm not in the remake. Oh, you were expecting that I would be? Yeah, no, you know what? Because my theory is that ghosts don't age... Not that I have."
* The model town has a car upside down in the water below the Winter River Bridge, representing the crash that killed Adam and Barbara in the first movie.
* Michael Keaton said making the sequel was more fun than the original.
* Both Michael Keaton and director Tim Burton opted to keep the character as politically incorrect as he was in the original film due to their love for that character trait in spite of the political correctness in modern films because "he doesn't evolve."
* 'Beetlejuice 2' was a day and a half away from finishing filming before the actors strike began.
* Tim Burton said in addition to having an interest in further exploring the character of Lydia, his experience executive producing Netflix's Wednesday encouraged him to return to the world of his 1988 film.
* Writer Seth Grahame-Smith has been working on the script since 2012.
* During an appearance on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, Winona Ryder admitted that she considered Beetlejuice and Lydia "endgame" and advocated for them getting together. The crew gave her the characters' Cake Toppers after filming as a keepsake.
* The shrinker characters in the film are fully practical. Inside the costumes are experienced creature performers Paul Warren and Nick Kellington (to name but a few). The tiny heads are completely animatronic and are being remote controlled off set by puppeteers.
* Lydia hosts her own paranormal investigation show called "Ghost House." While it's a perfect name for the series, it's also a cheeky reference to what could have been the 1988 film's title, if Warner Bros. got their way. "'Ghost House' was actually almost the name of the first movie," screenwriter Al Gough told Variety. "They didn't like 'Beetlejuice.' Tim really had to fight to call it 'Beetlejuice.'"
* Tim Burton said Jenna Ortega shares a certain quality which he saw in Winona Ryder when she was younger.
* Tim Burton said Michael Keaton didn't rehearse before going on set.
* Tim Burton and Monica Bellucci started their relationship while the film was in the making.
* One of the exhibits in Delia's cancelled show is a video of her surrounded by Crows. This could be a nod to Catherine O'Hara's character Moira, in Schitt's Creek (2015) who made her comeback in a film called 'The Crows Have Eyes III The Crowening'.
* In July 2023, many news outlets reported on a series of thefts from the East Corinth, Vermont, set of Beetlejuice 2. Vermont's NBC 5 affiliate (WPTZ) reported that among the items stolen were a large lamppost topped with a pumpkin decoration, several prop windows, and a version of a large, spiky sculpture familiar to viewers of the first movie as one of Delia Deetz's artworks. Eyewitnesses reported that the thief was spotted fleeing the scene in a GMC pickup truck.
* Monica Bellucci's body is pieced together in a similar way to Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, although in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice it's staples that are used rather than stitches. Burton produced The Nightmare Before Christmas and Catherine O'Hara voiced Sally.
* Christopher Walken was originally offered the role of Wolf Jackson before it was given to Willem Dafoe.
* Monica Bellucci said the role of Delores required movement described as "almost like a horror dancing." It took two to three days to film her movement for a specific scene.
* The Maitlands originally had a cameo at the end of the film but Tim Burton felt that no amount of digital de-aging would convince audiences that Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis were the same ages they were in the first film.
* After years of speculation and delays, the film was finally confirmed to be in active development at CinemaCon (2023)
* The transport that brings people to the Great Beyond is known as the Soul Train with many people dressed in '70s attire dancing to disco/funk music, with a conductor resembling Don Cornelius of the original Soul Train (1971).
* This will be Tim Burton's 20th feature film he has directed.
* This will be the second sequel that Tim Burton and Michael Keaton have worked on since Batman Returns (1992).
* Warner Bros. released the first movie poster on February 1, 2024 and announced the official title will be "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."
* The music featured in the ending montage (The Dream/The Nightmare) is featured in the ending montage of Carrie (1976).
* Delores's backstory is an extended reference to Black Sunday (1960), complete with black and white cinematography and Beetlejuice inexplicably narrating it in Italian. The director Mario Bava later is name-dropped and another of his films, Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966), is mentioned as Richard's favorite movie, and Lydia went into labor with Astrid while they were attending a Bava marathon.
* The budget for this film is estimated to be $150 million. The budget for the first film was just $15 million (in 1988 dollars ). When adjusted for inflation, that $15 million would only be worth $39 million in 2024, meaning that the budget for Beetlejuice BeetleJuice (2024) was nearly 4 times the budget for the first film.
* Released one day after Michael Keaton's 73rd birthday
* Arthur Conti auditioned for the role over a Zoom call with Tim Burton and a chemistry test with Jenna Ortega, receiving the news that he got the part on April Fool's Day, leading him to initially dismiss it as a practical joke.
* Impressed with his script for Chasing Amy (1997), Warner Bros. offered Kevin Smith the chance to rewrite some projects for them, including a Beetlejuice (1988) sequel titled "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian." Smith said, "Didn't we say all we needed to say with the first Beetlejuice? Must we go tropical?" He turned it down in favor of Superman Reborn, later retitled Superman Lives, which ended up being canceled.
* At one point, Chloë Grace Moretz was considered for the role of Astrid but she lost out to Jenna Ortega. She had previously worked with Burton on Dark Shadows.
* Monica Bellucci dubbed her own character, in the Italian edition of the movie.
* The opening crawl depicting a model version of the town of Winter River shows a crashed vehicle in the river next to the bridge, and a bride and groom standing at the bottom of the hill of the iconic house. This is a nod to the Maitlands' fate in the first movie.
* In the first film, Betelgeuse offers to cook for Adam and Barbara and says, "Hope you like italian!" This film reveals he was actually an Italian during the Black Plague (which he also mentioned living through in the first one).
* Catherine O'Hara had six custom wigs prepared in a light copper color by an in-house wig maker. However makeup artist Christine Blundell said O'Hara was all in when it came to returning to Delia's original red hair, which ultimately led to a whole night coloring the wigs up to the vivid red and cutting them into styles.
* Tim Burton admitted that his choice of the song MacArthur Park was more subconscious and matter-of-fact than anything else: "I have my own bizarre playlist. Everybody has a playlist. So that was on mine. I don't know, it wasn't in the script or anything, it's just something that I felt, I don't know, it just fit the spirit of it. And it was a song I liked. It was emotional, it was operatic and it's sort of bizarrely romantic and grand. And so it just felt like given the character of him and his sort of multi-talented, multilingual, whatever But that was a beautiful thing. We didn't really worry about the script or the studio or anybody. We just went and did it. Which is something, like I said, it kind of re-energized the fact of why you like making movies, just kind of it's the unknown. It's not something that is set in stone. It's something that's, we think about it, but then we just don't worry about it. We just do it. And it was quite liberating." Catherine O'Hara, echoed Burton's intuitive feeling that "MacArthur Park" just fit the movie: "And the whole church and the musical number, when I first heard they were doing the whole song and Tim just came up with so many levels of insanity in that number. And I mean, but real stuff going on too with Lydia and Astrid and us. It's just wild and great and surprising."
* Alfred Gough didn't originally write Delores' first victim, a deceased janitor with an actor in mind, so Tim Burton called in his frequent collaborator Danny DeVito for the role and DeVito accepted.
* According to website Movieweb, talks of Beetlejuice 2 started right after the movie hit the big screen in 1988. Many directors and writers have been attached to the project at one time or another, but nothing has gotten past the writing stage. For a while, it looked like the sequel was actually happening under the title of Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, but that appears to be long gone now. Michael Keaton has expressed his doubts about Beetlejuice 2 often over the last handful of years, while Tim Burton seems more hopeful, noting that it would take the right script to get it all together. In Oct. 2017, Warner Brothers hired screenwriter Mike Vukadinovich to pen a new version of the script after
* Movie posters featuring Keaton and Ryder popped up in the internet a couple of years ago fanning fans' hopes that the movie was in production, but they weren't official. According to website Inquisitr, the posters were created by professional graphic designer Alex Murillo. Murillo did not create these posters to perpetuate a hoax. He actually first made the art back in August, 2016, as a tribute to the original film, when the Beetlejuice 2 movie was thought to be confirmed to be in pre-production with director Tim Burton back at the helm. In March of 2016, Entertainment Weekly had reported that this early "information was based on fabricated comments from the director" but that didn't stop Murillo.
* Monica Bellucci said that the makeup process was "extensive," taking three hours each day to create.
* Although Beetlejuice's overall appearance stayed fairly similar to the original, makeup artist Christine Blundell and her team still went through weeks of trying different samples of how his look should be, she explained "I got all of Michael's stuff prepped and before he came in, we had a body double. We were just literally working out how we bring back his character with our own version. But it looked as close as what it did originally. Then he arrived and kind of fine-tuned the last little bits." While Michael Keaton doesn't support too many prosthetics as Beetlejuice just the fake nose and teeth, Blundell said there was a very specific preparation process to getting him caked in the character's signature makeup, "it is literally a proper grease paint" she confessed..
* When Beetlejuice bombards Lydia's phone with ads, one of them says that he puts the "fun in funeral."
* Danny DeVito (Janitor) was one of many actors considered to play Beetlejuice before Michael Keaton was cast in the original
* The first Tim Burton film since Edward Scissorhands (1990) not to be edited by Chris Lebenzon.
* Danny DeVito who plays the dead janitor at the start of the film, isn't mentioned in the opening credits, but is shown in the creative closing credits.
* The premiere of the film at the Venice Film Festival drew a 3 minute standing ovation.
* The operator in Beetlejuice's work department strongly resembles "Mother" Norma Bates from Psycho (1960).
* Before Lydia floats up the stairs in her school uniform in Beetlejuice (1988), she's seen leaving Miss Shannon's School for Girls. The esteemed institution makes a return in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), as Astrid rides her bike past its sign following Charles' funeral.
* Willem Dafoe was considered for Bruce Wayne / Batman before Burton settled on the idea of casting Michael Keaton for his 1989 adaptation of the DC hero.
* Before Michael Keaton played the titular character of Batman (1989) he was Beetlejuice (1988) the year before, now it's the other way around as he reprised the role of Batman in The Flash (2023) the year before and a year later reprised his role of Beetlejuice for this sequel.
* The first Tim Burton movie in 5 years since Dumbo (2019).
* Astrid and Jeremy embracing and then he surprises her by levitating them both above the floor, is similar to a scene in Casper (1995) with Astrid even wearing a dress slightly similar to what Kat wears. Both Christina Ricci who played Kat and Jenna Ortega have both portrayed Wednesday Addams, with Ricci even appearing on the first season of the Netflix show Wednesday (2022) with Ortega.
* writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar said that the decision to tell Betelgeuse's origin story in Italian was Tim Burton's, as he was inspired by the works of Federico Fellini. Millar added that Burton said Betelgeuse's origin story was like the prologue to a Fellini movie, so it had to be told in black and white and Italian and with an overall visual style like those in Fellini's movies. In addition to that, Monica Bellucci is Italian, so it was fitting that Delores was also Italian.
* When it came to Lydia's makeup, makeup artist Christine Blundell said she and the team aimed to make it look as if it had always been applied a few hours before to give a more authentic feel to the character, as her life is too mad to keep going in and making her look precise and she didn't want to look pristine.
* Adam and Barbara found a loophole to ascend to the afterlife instead of being forced to haunt the house. It may be due to the exorcism that nearly double killed them; they were technically broken free of the binding to it as the point of an exorcism is to expel the dead to the afterlife.
* The third collaboration between director Tim Burton, actors Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito, and composer Danny Elfman following Batman Returns (1992) and Dumbo (2019).
* The Polish dubbing corrects the error in the scene in which Maria Sklodowska-Curie is referred to as a "French physicist", instead identifying her correctly as Polish.
* A broad-shouldered man with a tiny shrunken head first appears in the Netherworld Waiting Room at the end of Beetlejuice (1988). In the sequel, Bob, a shrunken-head guy leads an office full of yellow-suited shrunken head guys, each wearing a red nametag. Those nametags are actually references to producers of the film, from Brad (Pitt) to Al (Gough). "The editor did that in post," Gough told Variety, "They told me about it at the premiere!" Those aren't the only real-life names that made it into the film: Gough and co-writer Miles Millar called Lydia and Rory's couples therapist "Dr. Glickman," after their long-time friend and Miramax CEO Jon Glickman (who also produced Burton's series Wednesday (2022)).
* Another attempt at a sequel was Beetlejuice In Love. This script was penned by co-writer for the first film Warren Skaaren, completely independent from Burton's input and had no returning characters besides Betelgeuse and Juno. Set almost entirely in the Nietherworld, it focused on Beetlegeuse's scheme to manipulate a recently deceased opera singer named Leo so that he could return to the living. Unfortunately, the script never moved past its first draft as Skaaren would sadly pass away from cancer a few months after he created it.
* The headless corpse of Charles Deetz is voiced by an uncredited actor.
* The only line of the teaser trailer - "The Juice is loose" - references O. J. Simpson. Within three weeks of the teaser's release, Simpson passed away.
* The cast of the Japanese dub were made up to resemble their roles, complete with the original costumes, in order to get fully into character.
* Jenna Ortega was the only actress who didn't need a lot of prep work, as her character needed to look as if she just wasn't wearing any makeup and luckily Ortega had the perfect complexion to make it work.
* Rory was inspired by Otho, Delia's interior design and exorcist friend in the original film, with writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar devising him as a character who everyone wanted to see getting his comeuppance like Otho and enjoying the idea of Lydia being in a weird codependent relationship everyone sees it that way herself included, Gough and Millar wanted the audience to understand why Rory is with Lydia and that he was a "schmuck," but they felt that they needed to find Rory's humanity without him being a mere punchline. Once Justin Theroux was cast and connected with the writers over Zoom, he provided Gough and Millar with ideas they incorporated.
* This is Tim Burton's second film to gross over $100 million domestically in its opening weekend, after Alice in Wonderland (2010). After adjusting for inflation, Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), and Planet of the Apes (2001) also reached the milestone.
* A brief shot of the station board above the Afterlife Express reveals that the final afterlife options in this universe consist of the Great Beyond, The Pearly Gates, The Fiery Inferno, and the Elysium Fields.
* This was Tim Burton's third movie to be shot with Panavision anamorphic lenses, since Mars Attacks! (1996) and Planet of the Apes (2001), but unlike those movies, which were filmed in Panavision (anamorphic) for the widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, this one was filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 (anamorphic) on Sony Venice Full Frame digital cameras for a native 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
* The undead janitor is a slovenly man who drinks bleach and has a distaste for "goddamn foreigners" (the recently deceased, in this case) very reminiscent of Danny DeVito's character Frank Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005).
* Willem Dafoe explained to Variety at the Marrakesh Film festival about his character he later regretted sharing those details about his character, fearing that Tim Burton may get angry with him for revealing a few spoilers from the film.
* For makeup artist Christine Blundell it was important for her department to be "respectful" to the original 1988 cult classic while also finding their "own" style more than 30 years later. Each decision, she said, was a "collaboration" between herself, the actors and director Tim burton, who was "very specific" about what he envisioned for the characters.
* Beetlejuice DID live during the Black Plague and grave robbed; which is why he said he had a great time.
* Both Michael Keaton and Willem Dafoe have played Spider-Man villains. Dafoe appeared as Green Goblin in Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) while Keaton portrayed The Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017).
* The sculpture Delia Deetz made in the first movie was donated to her step granddaughter Astrid's boarding school.
* The Italian narrator in Betelgeuse's origin story was Stefano Marchetti, who is best known for his work in the sound and music department of various projects, most notably Netflix's Kaos (2024), where he served as re-recording mixer and sound supervisor.
* It's shown Delia kept her promise to never alter Charles' study. Even years later, it's still the same design Adam and Barbara had it in.
* Two Jennifer Aniston's ex-husbands are involved with this film: Brad Pitt as a producer, and Justin Theroux, who plays Rory.
* Jane Butterfield Jr is shown to be a real estate agent just like her mother. She is SLIGHTLY less callous than her mother, offhandedly wondering if Delia would sell the house after Charles died; unlike her mother, she isn't pushy about it.
* Lydia refers to Betelgeuse as a "trickster demon". In the first draft of the original film, Betelgeuse was scripted as a winged demon.
* According to the makeup artist Christine Blundell it was imperative to provided distinct reference between Astrid and Lydia, she commented: "What we wanted with Jenna's character was very different to the Lydia child because she could see the dead people and she was never against it. Whereas Jenna's character was kind of almost, like, 'Mum, you're being daft, I don't believe you.' as their characters were, they were very different children growing up. Jenna's character was very anti what her mum was about and didn't believe in the afterlife at all."
* It's stated the original film happened 30 years ago, putting the sequel in 2018. This would put Lydia in her late 40s.
* It makes sense Delia arranged for a choir to sing the Banna Boat Song at the funeral. It was the first time she and Charles experienced being around ghosts.
* Lydia mentions her biological mother is still alive, giving Astrid at least one maternal relative after Charles died.
* Lydia spent her adult life helping ghosts much like Dr. Harvey in the 1995 Casper film; making it a TV show, like Ghost Hunters. While she isn’t a therapist, Lydia does investigate why the ghosts are haunting their locations and tries to find ways to help.
* The conductor of the Soul Train might not just look like Don Cornelius, but maybe the actual Don Cornelius. Considering that he committed suicide in 2012, this may be his sentence of community service in the afterlife.
* It makes sense Beetlejuice gets bleeped. He’s in a CHURCH, a holy place, which bars unclean language.
* The film is the fifth collaboration between Danny Devito and director, Tim Burton. This is also only the second Burton film after “Mars Attacks!” that doesn’t feature Devito in a circus setting.
* The second September release to gross over $100 million domestically in its opening weekend, after It (2017).
* The screenplay was written by Alfred Gough. By a strange quirk, in two previous films directed by Tim Burton, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) the key role of Alfred was played by the late actor Michael Gough.
* Astrid tells Jeremy that one Halloween, her dad made her dress up as Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream, on which the mask of Ghostface was based on. Jenna Ortega played Tara Carpenter in Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023).
* Jenna Ortega plays Wednesday Addams in Wednesday (2022), produced and directed by Tim Burton. Her on-screen step-grandmother Catherine O'Hara played Wednesday's Grandma Frump in The Addams Family (2019).
* The dead janitor is listening to "Margaritaville" on his walk man when he first appears.
* Winona Ryder appeared in Mermaids alongside Christina Ricci. In Beetlejuice Winona Ryder works with Jenna Ortega. Both Ricci and Ortega would play Wednesday Addams at points in their careers.
* Max Pemberton, who appears in the Netherworld Waiting Room as a dead surfer dude, previously appeared in the first episode of Wednesday (2022) alongside Jenna Ortega, which was directed by Tim Burton
* It was Catherine O'Hara's idea for Delia's death, co-writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were talking about her character, and she said, "I think she should commit suicide just because she's so in love with Charles. The ultimate thing she can do is to join him in the afterlife." They both thougt it was a great idea, but felt like a weird well to go down in a comedy to have a main character commit suicide toward the end of the movie. They brainstormed what would be a more creative, bizarre way that she could die that was an accidental death. So they got to the idea of the asps, which they really loved.
* While working on this film, Michael Keaton was more than twice the age (71) he was when he worked on the original film (35).
* In addition to the score "The Dream/The Nightmare" from Carrie (1976), there is another Carrie link: Jeffrey Jones starred Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) alongside Edie McClurg, who played Helen in Carrie (1976).
* This is the second time Winona Ryder plays a mother who has to rescue her child from a frightening and dangerous otherworld after the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016).
* The teaser poster has the numbers 09,06,24 prominently displayed, this refers to the release date of 6 September, 2024 (not 9 June, 2024).
* The ending dream was the last scene written before the strike. Co-writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar initially turned that scene in the hospital hours before the strike was called. To them it just felt bonkers and inspired to have it seem like it'd be this nice, warm, cuddly feeling and then the Betelgeuse baby comes back and it's too perfect.
* Lydia is implied to live in New York City, as that's where her show is filmed.
* Charles' death was based on a nightmare Tim Burton had where he survived a plane crash only to be eaten by a shark.
* Jeffrey Jones won't reprise his role as Charles Deetz due to his current status as a sex offender and subsequent retirement from acting. There was some speculation that the role would be recast, and the teaser confirmed that the character has died. His funeral is fittingly accompanied by "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", which was famously used in the original Beetlejuice (1988).
* While the Maitlands don't appear in the film, you can spot small figurines of them in the river trench within the model looking up at the house in the opening credits.
* One of the newspapers Betelgeuse is reading has a short article with a headline about ghosts whose deaths were incorrectly assigned as suicides. This would explain why Betelgeuse (who was poisoned) and Richard (who was eaten by piranhas) were assigned to work in the afterlife bureaucracy when neither of them killed themselves.
* There's a few subtle and quick indicators that Jeremy isn't who he seems to be:
** His house is conspicuously the only one without any Halloween decorations, which Lydia finds odd.
** Jeremy never leaves his house or its yard (plus treehouse) because he can't, just like the Maitlands were confined to their house.
** As he jokes that his parents think his James Dean costume looks more like Richie Cunningham (from the series Happy Days (1974)), Astrid balks a little, not familiar with the reference. Having grown up in the 70's, Rory's parents would have seen the show in its original run, and reruns were still regularly airing on Nick at Nite and elsewhere at the time of his death.
** When Astrid first meets Jeremy by crashing through his fence, he comments that his parents wouldn't even notice it. That's because his parents are dead, and their ghosts are unaware of reality around them.
** When Astrid and Jeremy first enter the house and interact with his parents their faces are very conspicuously kept in shadow so neither Astrid nor the audience can see them. That's because their ghost still have the weapons Jeremy used to murder them embedded in their faces. * Jeremy's dad is seen watching a '90s or early 2000s "fatback" TV instead of a flatscreen in 2024.
** Jeremy's parents are also first shown from a distance and out of focus as he hurries Astrid past them.
** What quick shots we see of the interior of his house, including his kitchen and living room, show that there's nothing of 2024-modern-day technology or aesthetics: faux-50's retro kitchen design, dark wood panel walls, a CRT TV playing Wheel of Fortune, and Jeremy's record collection being no later than 90's music bands. He murdered his parents about 25 years ago.
** Astrid finds the Handbook for the Recently Deceased in his room, which he plays off as something he got at a yard sale. This foreshadows two things at once: Jeremy is a ghost, and also he's a liar.
** Lydia mentions early on that her gift for seeing ghosts first manifested when she was around Astrid's age. Astrid similarly starts seeing ghosts a day later.
* Screenwriter Al Gough says he and co-writer Miles Millar found Charles' death to be a creative way they could incorporate the stop-motion animation Burton has used in many projects: "We thought, 'Oh, this is a great way to put that in the movie and tell the backstory of Charles.' The idea of crashing and getting eaten by a shark was Tim's own worst fear of death. So he thought, 'Okay, the shark just takes his head off, and we're off to the races.'"
* Betelgeuse disappearing by way of the inflating body gag happened that way a few times in the animated series Beetlejuice (1989).
* One long-unanswered question from Beetlejuice involved how the title character's head would return to its normal size after shrinking. Michael Keaton revealed the sequel is expanding on Beetlejuice's original ending gag.
* The denouement features an extended reference to the ending of Carrie, complete with a surprise jump scare. It even uses the same soundtrack. Meanwhile, Dream-Astrid gives birth to a demonic baby version of Beetlejuice who then massacres the delivery team in a reference to It's Alive
* The song "The Dream/The Nightmare" from Carrie (1976) plays during the final scene as Lydia (Winona Ryder) dreams about her future.
* When Astrid is reading the "Handbook Of The Recently Deceased," it falls open on two particular sections which become very important at the end of the film. The section on the penal code Betelgeuse breaks when he enters the afterlife with Lydia and the section on how to summon a sandworm.
* Winona Ryder and Monica Bellucci were both in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)which features Gary Oldman in the titular role of Dracula. Oldman was also considered for Beetlejuice but he turned it down. In Dracula Bellucci played one of Dracula's vampire brides, while Dracula himself was primarily after Mina (Ryder). In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), Bellucci plays Beetlejuice's undead soul-sucking ex-wife, while Beetlejuice himself is still pursuing Lydia (Ryder). In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula himself has photo of Mina and psychic link with her. In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice himself has photo of Lydia and psychic link with her. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mina talks with Dracula about Marie Curie. In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Lydia's daughter Astrid dresses up as Marie Curie for Halloween. At the end of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mina goes to Transylvania and visits Dracula's Castle. At the end of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Lydia and her daughter Astrid travel together and visit Dracula's Castle, where Astrid becomes smitten with an employee named Vlad, who she later marries. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula's human name before becoming a vampire was Vlad.
* When the MacArthur Park sequence begins Lydia's appearance resembles her animated counter part from the Beetlejuice cartoon with her wearing a red dress and having a similar type of hairstyle.
* In Beetlejuice: The Musical, "Say My Name" has the lyrics: "Being young and female doesn't mean that I'm an easy mark/ I've been swimming with piranhas/ I don't need a shark/ Yes, life sucks, but not that much." In this sequel, Lydia's ex-husband was killed by piranhas and her father Charles was eaten by a shark.
* Beetlejuice's wife Dolores poisoned him and he murdered her before he succumbed. In the first film, it's revealed that those who commit suicide end up becoming social workers in the underworld. Though Dolores gave him poison in a cup, he drank it, thereby technically killing himself, which is why he ended up working with Juno before becoming a bio-exorcist. Other examples in the film comma such as Wolf, indicate that any self-inflicted death can be ruled as a suicide by the afterlife bureaucracy, even if it was not intentional. This may help explain why Richard (Astrid's father) was working in the train station: perhaps he caused his own boat to capsize accidentally.
* In Beetlejuice (1988), when Beetlejuice encounters Charles and Delia, they're embracing each other and Beetlejuice hands Charles a pair of copperhead snakes. This foreshadows Delia's death by being bitten by asp snakes in the sequel.
* Rory mentions that a Netflix executive is at the wedding. Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega appear in popular Netflix series Stranger Things (2016) and Wednesday (2022) respectively.
* The baby crawling on the ceiling pays homage to Trainspotting (1996), when a stoned Renton has hallucinations with a crawling baby who moves by the floor and the ceiling.
* In dark humor, Delia is upset because what set off the chain of events that got Charles killed is that he basically went across the world to see two rare "birds doing it".
* The contracts the deceased make are voided if they bring a living person into the afterlife unless it's for swapping lives.
Category:Trivia facts