- One of the books on the can that traps Ash's possessed hand is "A Farewell to Arms".
- Director Cameo: [Sam Raimi] the first Medieval knight to raise his sword and give his speech before hailing to Ash.
- Professor Knowby's dead wife is said to be in the "fruit cellar," a reference to Psycho (1960).
- Ash's chainsaw appears to switch hands in one scene. This is because Sam Raimi decided Ash should walk the opposite way across the room in that scene, so he flipped the negative.
- Often considered to be a remake of The Evil Dead (1981), however this is not accurate. The rights to show scenes from the original could not be obtained to re-cap what happened, so they recreated the beginning to explain how Ash got to the cabin, a headless Linda, etc.
- The recap of the previous film includes a shot where the "evil force" runs through the cabin and rams into Ash. When this shot was filmed, Bruce Campbell suffered a broken jaw when Sam Raimi (who was operating the camera) crashed into him with a bicycle. Or so people were led to believe. This was a story concocted by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell as a gag to see how many people would believe it actually happened.
- Director Trademark: [Sam Raimi] [Oldsmobile Delta 88]
- In an attempt to attain an R rating for the film (the first Evil Dead was released unrated), fluid spit out by the Possessed Henrietta was variously black and green instead of blood red. An alternate take of the "blood flood" (when Ash is deluged by blood from a hole in the wall) used different colors as well (as shown in the special features on the DVD). Ultimately, the film was not given an R rating and was released unrated.
- The sexy, surly Bobby Joe was inspired by Holly Hunter, who was a housemate of Sam Raimi's in the early 80s, along with Joel Coen and Frances McDormand. One particular incident inspired the character: Hunter was auditioning for a hooker part and was unusually made-up and wearing a sexy, short-skirted outfit. She became angry at Raimi when he somewhat leered at her. Raimi pulled for Hunter to play the part, but the producers wanted someone "sexier".
- Director Trademark: [Sam Raimi] [chainsaw] After Ash loses his hand, he attaches a chainsaw to the stump.
- Most of the film was shot on a set built inside the gymnasium of the JR Faison Junior High School in Wadesboro, North Carolina.
- Stephen King was such a huge fan of The Evil Dead (1981) that he convinced producer Dino De Laurentiis over dinner (who was producing King's Maximum Overdrive (1986) at the time) to have his production company DEG (De Laurentiis Entertainment Group) finance Evil Dead II (1987).
- The references to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) were the conclusion to an unspoken battle of "can-you-top-this" between Sam Raimi and Wes Craven. In Bill Warren's book The Evil Dead Companion, it says that Raimi took the torn Jaws (1975) poster in Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) to mean that Craven was saying that his movie was even scarier than Jaws. Raimi included a torn Hills poster in The Evil Dead (1981) to send the same message. Craven responded by including a scene of Nancy watching The Evil Dead in Nightmare. Raimi responded to that with a scene of a destroyed Nightmare poster in Evil Dead II.
>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<
Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.
- SPOILER: A glove belonging to the A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Freddy Krueger character can be seen hanging above the door of the Toolshed when Ash carves his girlfriends head with a chainsaw and when he's looking for the pages in the later cellar scenes. This was in response to the use of The Evil Dead (1981) on a television screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
- SPOILER: The scenes with Evil Ash are taken almost scene for scene from the Sam Raimi short film "Within the Woods" which was used to finance the original The Evil Dead (1981).
- SPOILER: The scene were Ash fights the severed hand is taken from Scott Spiegel's short film "Attack of the Helping Hand" in which almost the same events occur, except it involves the Hamburger Helper hand trying to kill a lady.
- SPOILER: Originally when Bobbie Joe gets killed, the vines pull her legs apart and she's split in half like a wishbone when she gets rammed with a tree between her legs. It was cut out in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the R-rating.
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