Trivia

According to Savage Steve Holland, the film is mostly autobiographical. He was suicidal when his high school girlfriend left him for the captain of the ski team. Following the film's release, his ex-girlfriend contacted him to apologise.

In a 2004 interview, Savage Steve Holland said his suicide attempts inspired this movie. "I went into the garage, and I put an extension cord on a pipe and I'm on a garbage can, and I'm thinking, 'Should I do this? Maybe this isn't a good idea.' Anyway, it was a plastic garbage can, and my weight just like crashed through it, and I fell, and the pipe broke! And it starts pouring water everywhere. And I'm basically in a garbage can, drowning. And my mom comes and starts yelling at me for breaking a pipe, which is what any mom would do. So I started writing down stupid ways to kill yourself that would fail after that, and I put them in sort of a diary. And that diary kind of became Better Off Dead (1985)."

Savage Steve Holland said in an interview that John Cusack hated this movie, and walked out of the film after twenty minutes during a special screening. Holland said "The next morning he basically walked up to me and was like, 'You know, you tricked me. Better Off Dead was the worst thing I have ever seen. I will never trust you as a director ever again, so don't speak to me'. He was just really upset. And I said, 'What happened?! What's wrong?!' And he just said that I sucked, and it was the worst thing he had ever seen, and that I had used him, and made a fool out of him, and all this other stuff . . . It was so out of left field that it just floored me."

As a promo, Diane Franklin had her manager contact Dodgers Stadium to see if they'd be interested in having her do an autograph signing. "I just kind of thought it would be fun for people, because if they saw the movie, and I was at Dodger Stadium, it would kind of be a fun venue for everyone to come and see me there," she said. The ballpark said no to a signing but asked her to sing the anthem. "What was unusual about that, was when they introduced me, I thought they were going to say, 'And here's Diane Franklin from Better Off Dead,' or, 'Here's Diane Franklin from Bill & Ted' or something. And they wound up saying, 'And here's Diane Franklin.' And I'm thinking, 'Who knows Diane Franklin?' Nobody knows who I am.' It was so funny."

Henry Winkler was instrumental in getting the film made. In the early 1980s, Savage Steve Holland's short film, My 11-Year-Old Birthday Party, played at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Winkler saw the film and took a liking to Holland. At Winkler's suggestion, Holland checked out John Cusack in The Sure Thing (1985), which Winkler executive produced. Holland thought that Cusack was perfect for the lead role. He had to fight to get Cusack cast, as the studio didn't think he was much of a leading man based on his nerdy turn in Sixteen Candles (1984).