Guys, there's something I need to get off my chest.

- John Carpenter had long been a fan of the 1951 film, The Thing from Another World, as evidenced by the characters in Halloween watching it on TV. This movie, however, is less a remake of the original of that movie but rather an adaptation of the original novella, Who Goes There?. It doesn't even take place on the same continent: the 1951 movie was on the North Pole, this one in Antarctica.

- But despite this, Carpenter did not take on the film at first. He did, however, when he was told about the blood test scene.

- The Norwegian dog who ends up infecting Outpost 31 was played by Jed, a half-wolf,half dog hybrid. It was noted that the dog was unusually quiet and calm on set.

- The exterior shots were filmed in British-Columbia, while the interiors were shot in Los Angeles. The temperature on set was lowered to 40 F to make it more authentic.

- The characters' reactions to the autopsy scene was not acting: the cast were legitimately disgusted by the convincing special effects and the awful stench. The only person in the room who remained stone faced was Blair, because actor Wilfred Brimely was a cowboy in real life was used to gutting animals and the like.

- Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges turned down the role of MacReady before Kurt Russell was cast.

- Special effects master Rob Bottin (who was 22 when he took on the project) slaved away to the bone to create the movie's amazing creature effects. He worked seven days a week, lived off the vending machines, and slept at the studio. Bottin had to check himself into a hospital once production wrapped so that he could recover from his fatigue and stress. In order to make sure he wasn't completely exhausted, the dog kennel scene was done by Stan Winston (the designer and creator of the Terminator cyborgs and the Predator). He refused to be credited as to not take away from Bottin's work, though he was given a special thanks in the credits.

- The iconic poster was created by Drew Struzan overnight and without seeing any images from the movie.

- During the infamous defibrillator scene, Norris's head didn't rip off the body correctly the first time. Also, the set caught on fire, there's that.

- The Norwegian's seemingly crazed ranting in the opening scene roughly translates to "Get the hell outta there. That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing! It's imitating a dog, it isn't real! GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS!!"

- To this day, Kurt Russell makes the same mistake his character makes in the movie: he will sometimes confuse the Norwegians for Swedes.

- The filmmakers wanted to make it as vague as possible as to when certain characters were assimilated and became things. They were successful: they still haven't figured out who was assimilated when and in what order.

- The burnt out Norwegian camp was just the American camp shot from a different angle.

- Ending Spoilers:

- Barf bags were handed out during the test screenings.

- The movie was famously a bomb upon release in June 1982, not just financially, but critically; reviews painted the movie as too cold, nihilistic, and disgusting. A few contemporary articles even painted this as "the most hated movie of all time". John Carpenter took this seeming failure particularly hard, a feeling not helped by the director of the original movie publicly dismissing it as crap. This was all most likely because the movie had the misfortune of opening the week after another movie utterly demolished the box office and turned off everyone fro the idea malevolent aliens. Thankfully, the movie's reception has improved to the point that it is considered a classic (a fate shared by Blade Runner, which opened the same week), and Carpenter has chosen this one as his favorite movie that he made.

- This film contains the greatest movie beard of all time.

Nope.