12 Fun Facts about BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

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While we wait to see if we actually get another Bill & Ted sequel, I thought I’d put together of list of Fun Facts for the movie that started it all: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This was such a ridiculous yet extremely enjoyable movie. It starred Alex Winter and George Carlin and launched the career of Keanu Reeves. I really hope that we get to see Bill & Ted 3. It would be so fun to revisit these characters after all these years. I tried to show the movie to my kids a few months ago, and they just didn't bite. I guess you just had to be growing up in the 1980s to fully appreciate its excellence. 

• The phone booth time machine that was used in the film was given away as a contest prize in Nintendo Power magazine. It was promoting a Bill & Ted video game for the NES, which sucked.

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• When Napoleon finishes his "waterslide" presentation near the end of the flick, Ted says, "I don't think it's gonna work." The maps show that Napoleon is actually diagramming the French invasion of Russia, Napoleon's most disastrous defeat.
• Bill & Ted started as a stand-up act in which the characters would discuss current events without knowing what they were talking about. 
• The original time machine from the script was a 1969 Chevy Van, but the filmmakers didn’t want people to thing they were ripping off Back to the Future. They changed it to a phone booth and apparently weren’t concerned about Doctor Who. When the van was in the script, Bill and Ted picked up even more historical figures than they did in the final film.
• Musician Stevie Salas provides the fingering for Rufus during the jam session at the end of the movie.
• The film completed shooting in 1987, but the release was delayed because the film's original financiers, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, went bankrupt. The movie was almost dumped onto cable television. Luckily, Nelson Entertainment bought the rights to the movie in 1988, and it was released in 1989.
• While doing his report at the end of the movive, Bill mentions that he has an Oedipus Complex. This term was coined by Sigmund Freud to describe a child's desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex. This is a reference to Bill's confused sexual feeling over his new stepmom, Missy.
• The original ending was pretty lame, as it had Bill and Ted delivering their history report in class with all of the historical figures displaying their views via blackboard.
• You can see an electric football game in the background during the scene where Bill and Ted leave Napoleon in Ted's younger brother's care. This might help explain why Bill and Ted are good at it and beat the reaper when they play in the sequel.
• Originally, Winter auditioned for the role of Ted and Reeves auditioned for the role of Bill. I don’t think it really mattered who got which part.
• In the original outline for the movie, Rufus was a 28-year-old high school sophomore who befriended Bill and Ted. There was also a character named John the Serf, whom Bill and Ted picked up in medieval England.
• The movie is rated PG, and they tried to keep the language clean throughout the film. But there is one quick F-bomb that can easily be missed. At the end of the scene where Ted is enticing Genghis Khan into the phone booth with the Twinkie, right after Genghis walks off screen, you hear him yell, "You motherfucker!" The last word is a bit muffled, though. One of the other curse words is heard when Ted asks Bill if they know where they're going, and after responding he doesn't know, Bill yells, "Shit!" while Ted just shouts.

Bill & Ted get Genghis Kahn to participate in their history project.

Here's the original trailer:

With only a few days before their high-school graduation, it looks like airheaded rock star wannabes Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are doomed to flunk all their finals. The boys' long-suffering teacher (Bernie Casey) gives them one more chance.

Info found on Imdb.