Total Recall/Trivia

• California Doubling: Much of the filming took place on location in Mexico City and at Estudios Churubusco. The futuristic subway station and vehicles are actually part of the Mexico City Metro, with the subway cars painted gray and television monitors added.
• Completely Different Title: Apparently, translating the title was difficult, leading to things such as Voyage au centre de la mémoire ("Journey to the Center of the memory"), O Vingador do Futuro ("The Avenger of the Future"), Desafio Total ("Total Challenge"), Atto di forza ("Act of (brute) force")... And all of those are completely different from the original short story's We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. That's why in Romania, where foreign movies are subtitled not dubbed, they didn't even bother with a translation. The movie was marketed as Total Recall. Same for the sequel.
  • The Chinese titles include Running in Hell and Hero of the Universe.
• DVD Commentary: The one for this film is particularly hilarious. For one, Verhoeven's Dutch accent, coupled with Schwarzenegger's Austrian accent, serve to make it almost unintelligible. Schwarzenegger's commentary consists almost entirely of making jokes about the three-breasted hooker, a grating tendency for stating the patently obvious ("This is me as a construction worker", "I used this guy as a Human Shield and then threw him down the escalator"). Verhoeven for his part has a Verbal Tic that leads him to end most of his sentences with "Izznit?". All throughout, Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger have a running argument about the true meaning of the film with Verhoeven insisting everything after the visit to Recall being a fantasy and Schwarzenegger insisting it was real.
• Dyeing for Your Art: To get in shape for the movie, Sharon Stone pumped iron and learned Tae Kwon Do.
• Flip-Flop of God: Paul Verhoeven on whether the events of the film were real or all in Quaid's mind. In the commentary, Schwarzenegger leans more to it actually happening, whereas Verhoeven leans more towards it being the ego-trip.
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Marc Alaimo, best known as Gul Dukat on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, enjoys one of his more prominent (if typically brief) film roles in a career of bit part work as the captain of the guards in the Martian spaceport.
  • Mary the three breasted hooker spilled hot chocolate on Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • Tim the mutant is played by a young Dean Norris, best known as Hank on Breaking Bad
• Hey, It's That Voice!: The Johnny Cab is voiced by, and modeled after, Robert Picardo, of Star Trek: Voyager fame.
• Missing Trailer Scene: In the film's trailer, when the space shuttle transporting Quaid to Mars lands at the Mars Federal Colony, a voice is heard saying "Welcome to Mars". However, that doesn't happen in the movie.
• Saved From Development Hell: Scripts had been kicking around Hollywood so long, people thought the project was jinxed. Dino De Laurentiis owned the film rights and had tried to get the project off the ground twice in Rome and Australia. Originally, it was less violent and more about the fantasy of taking a trip to Mars. Schwarzenegger was annoyed that De Laurentiis didn't offer it to him because he really wanted the part. Patrick Swayze and Richard Dreyfuss had been in the running to play Quaid, but De Laurentiis ran into money troubles (not for the first time), so Schwarzenegger tried to persuade Carolco to bankroll the film, and they bought it off him.
• Science Marches On (Geology): Mars having an ice core turned out to partially true.
• Stillborn Franchise: There was also a sequel in the works briefly, before Carolco Pictures went out of business. The rights went to 20th Century Fox who eventually turned it into Minority Report.
• Technology Marches On:
  • Although the film is set in 2084, an advertisement is seen for Fuji Film despite the fact that by the early 2000's, analog photography has been made all-but-obsolete by digital photography.
  • The videophones. Nobody seems to carry mobile devices. There's one scene where Richter and one of his goons are waiting for a call at a bar next to a videophone instead of being even closer.
• Troubled Production: The Mexico City shoot was considered a nightmare for most of the cast and crew. Many cast and crew members got sick at one point from contaminated water (the only major members of the production who didn't get sick were Schwarzenegger, who had remembered being sick during the Mexico shoot of Predator and took special precautions, and producer Ronald Shusett, who would give himself B12 shots each day to avoid illness) and the air was so polluted that Schwarzenegger recalled having trouble breathing on most days.
• Wag the Director: In the DVD Commentary, Paul Verhoeven said that for the love scene after Quaid wakes from his nightmare, he wanted Sharon Stone to show more skin, but she refused to do so. He settled for shooting the scene as it is shown, but mentions that he "got her back" while shooting Basic Instinct.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The late Christopher Reeve of Superman fame was reportedly attached to play Quaid at one point.
  • Nicole Kidman and Alexandra Paul were considered for Melina.
  • David Cronenberg was set to direct and even wrote a few drafts of the script before Paul Verhoeven took over. Cronenberg stated that he wanted to cast William Hurt as the lead, and was displeased by the producers' decision to reimagine the lead for an action star such as Schwarzenegger.
  • Over 40 drafts of the script had already been written when Paul Verhoeven agreed to read the screenplay. Some of them depicted Quaid as a mild-mannered accountant (instead of a construction worker). Most scripts had a similar first half (Quaid visits Rekall and starts having altered memories), but they all varied widely in the ending. One of them even had Quaid discover that he was really an alien in human disguise.
  • Jeff Bridges, Matthew Broderick, Richard Dreyfuss, Mark Harmon and Tom Selleck were considered for Quaid.
  • Cynthia Rothrock was considered for Lori. According to Rothrock, she found out years later that she didn't receive the part predominantly because some of her would-be costars were concerned by the prospect of being outshone by a female martial artist.