Nicolas Cage was originally considered for the role of Brad Hamilton, but after his audition the studio thought his performance was too dark and the role went, instead, to Judge Reinhold. Additionally, Cage was 17 at the time and could not work as many hours as actors over 18.

Alternate, sanitized takes of several scenes were filmed for use on broadcast television.

Nicolas Cage appears under the name Nicolas Coppola for the first and only time.

When Stacy and Ron Johnson end up going to "the point", the words "The Cinch" are spray-painted on the wall. The group that plays the last dance of the year is called Reeves Nevo and The Cinch.

Cameo: ['Nancy Wilson'] wife of writer Cameron Crowe and Heart band member appears as the woman in the car beside Brad's, laughing at his pirate costume.

The role of Mr. Hand was originally offered to Fred Gwynne who turned it down due to his objections over the tone of the sexual content in the film.

Andy Rathbone was the student that Cameron Crowe based Mark "Rat" Ratner on. He became famous in his own right for writing many of the "for Dummies" help books series.

It was filmed at Van Nuys High School in Van Nuys, California.

The mascot of Ridgemont High is the wolf, which is the same mascot of Van Nuys High School, where most of the school scenes were shot.

The book Arnold's holding while betting on the football game is "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke.

The scene where Linda teaches Stacy the finer points of how to give a man oral sex was originally supposed to take place in a hot tub with both girls naked. However, in order to avoid an "X" rating, the scene was changed to the school cafeteria.

Cameron Crowe wrote the screenplay based on his book. Cameron Crowe attended University of San Diego High School, he posed as a student at Clairemont High School. The principal then was not thrilled with the idea, but when he asked Crowe about musicians that he had met, he mentioned Kris Kristofferson. The principle was a big fan of Kristofferson and agreed to let Crowe on campus.

Stacy works at Perry's Pizza. Jennifer Jason Leigh actually worked at Perry's Pizza for a month after she got the role of Stacy Hamilton but before filming began.

David Lynch was originally offered the chance to direct before Amy Heckerling was chosen. He turned it down saying it was a funny script, but not really his thing.

In the scene where Ratner is getting dating advice from Damone in Damone's bedroom, Ratner is wearing a T-shirt for the movie, Popeye (1980) which stared Ray Walston, who played Mr. Hand.

When showing Ratner his method of dating, Damone practices his routine on a cardboard cutout of Deborah Harry of the rock group Blondie.

The mall scenes were filmed at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. It was damaged by earthquake in 1994, but still stood until 1998, when it was renovated and extensively re-designed by the architectural firm of Gensler for developer Douglas Emmett. Other than the parking structure, nothing recognizable from the 1980s era mall remains, the building having been converted from an enclosed, multi-story space to an open, mostly single-story mall.

Sean Penn was asked to read for the part of Brad Hamilton as well as that of Jeff Spicoli.

Sean Penn extinguished a cigarette in the palm of his hand in order to better understand his character Jeff Spicoli.

During shooting of the film, Sean Penn got so into character that he only answered as Spicoli. In fact, the door on his dressing room was labeled "Spicoli" instead of "Sean Penn".

Universal didn't think the film would become a hit. In fact, the studio had thought about not releasing it on the East Coast so that the film would die quickly at the box office.

For his masturbation scene, Judge Reinhold brought a large dildo to work with, unbeknown to the rest of the cast. Phoebe Cates' look of horror and disgust is very real.

Ranked at #2 on Entertainment Weekly's 50 Best High School Movies (2006).

Sean Penn asked out Pamela Springsteen, who played Dina, on the set of the movie; she accepted.

Nicolas Cage lied about his age so that he could get a bigger part, but the producers found out that he was only 17.

Sean Penn improvised during his takes and tried to find ways to aggravate actor Ray Walston, who played Mr. Hand, even off camera. He also did things to get genuinely startled reactions from the extras who played his classmates through unexpected improvisations.

The scenes in the mall were shot during the night from when the mall closed at 9:30 to when it opened at 9. The two kids who Ramone scalps the tickets to, were under 18 and due to labor laws couldn't film past certain hours, so they only had a 10-minute window to shoot their scenes.

Near the beginning of the movie, right after Mr. Hand sends Spicoli to the front office for being late to class, Mr. Hand passes out the class schedule of quizzes. After the paper is passed out, the students put the page up to their noses and deeply inhale. This was a popular school ritual of the '60s, '70s and early '80s as photocopying machines were very expensive, so spirit duplicators were used. The spirit duplicators used a colored wax as the "ink" and a noxious solvent as a transfer agent to impress the ink on the paper. These solvents sometimes took a long time to dry, hence the students' use of these solvents as a short-term "high".

Brad Hamilton's light-blue car is a 1960 Buick LeSabre.

Filming lasted five weeks.

In the scene where Brad is washing the Cruising Vessel, you can see he has a Springsteen (for Bruce Springsteen) bumper sticker. Pamela Springsteen, Bruce's sister, is also in the movie.

Just before the ending credits we see a close up of an arcade video game screen that reads "The End". The game was called "Missile Command" and was produced by Atari.

Continuity

The football game against Lincoln occurs after the Christmas scenes. A regular high school football season would have been over by then.

Spicoli ordered a double-cheese and sausage pizza for Mr. Hand's class, but when the box is opened there's only cheese on top.

When Brad is being fired in All-American Burger, the Coca-Cola clock on the background keeps shifting time out of sequence.

The patch Damone puts on his Gremlin to cover the word "prick" is too small, yet there is no paint beyond it.

When Mr. Hand is asking Spicoli about his truancy, he writes, "I don't know," on the chalkboard. As he does this there is a shot of the class where Stacy is wearing a completely different outfit than in the rest of the scene. It is established that she is wearing a brown sweater, beige pants and a brown headband, but in this one shot she is wearing a red vest over a pink shirt.



Factual errors

When Stacey and Mark are at the restaurant, they order two refills of Coke while Mark stalls to get his wallet from Mike. There is not a waitress in the world that would leave their table that messy and not take back the finished glasses, plates and antipasto tray. Not necessarily true - plates had food left on them and he was trying to buy time so he might have asked her to leave them so they could finish.

When Jeff Spicoli arrives at the school dance, he ducked underneath the balloons and flipped his hair. Sean Penn wore a fall, which is a wig only for the back. The front was his, but the back wasn't, so when his real bangs are in midair, the lining of the fall can be seen.

When the girls get off work at the mall they are exiting through the mall itself. Store employees leave through the back doors of their shops. Depends on mall policy and layout- may not have been a back door or might have been on an upper floor.

When Jefferson's little brother is riding in his older brother's (Forest Whitaker) car with Jeff Spicoli, he asks "you seen the new Playboy? Bo Derek's tits!". Bo Derek last posed for Playboy in August 1981. Filming for this movie was in November & December of 1981 so that "new" playboy would have been three of four months old.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

When Rat forgets his wallet, he calls Damone and asks him to borrow his mother's car to bring it to him, but later in the movie, he drives a Gremlin from the apartment he is also not supposed to have, clearly indicating it is his car. These two scenes are separated by several months, so it's entirely possible he could have bought the car in the interim.

At one point, Brad claims he has to work before school. But this is during the part of the movie that he works at the seafood restaurant. No fast-food restaurant like this would be open early enough that someone has to work there "before school." One possibility is that the scene was originally meant to be put later in the film when he got the Mi-T Mart job. This theory is backed up in the alternate broadcast version where Hamilton is in a guidance counselor's office talking about his future and he says "I get up at 5:30 to go to work at Mi-T Mart, THEN I go to school, THEN I go back to Mi-T Mart!"

Rat plays "Kashmir" from Led Zeppelin on his date with Stacy which is from Physical Graffiti, not Led Zeppelin IV. Despite numerous previous submissions, this is NOT a goof. A rock journalist like Cameron Crowe would never make this mistake. The producers weren't able to secure/license songs from Led Zeppelin IV but had access to Kashmir. From a character/in-universe standpoint, one could say Rat was clueless and played a song from the wrong album.

Stacy is giving change for a piece of pizza a customer is waiting for, while Ratner waits patiently behind waiting to ask her out, she says "$1.10 and you get $.5 cents back". For most coin combinations this is nonsense, but three quarters (75 cents) plus four dimes (40 cents) is $1.15 and would yield a nickel change.

Stacey tells Damone that she had not been with anybody else to make her pregnant and blames him for getting pregnant. In fact, Stacey lied, having been with Ron, the "audio specialist" from the mall a few weeks earlier. Her tryst with Ron was early in the school year, several months ago, not weeks ago (she did it was Ron before Christmas and didn't meet Damone until after Christmas). Damone is the only man she was with sexually at this point in time, so she didn't lie.



Revealing mistakes

Mr. Pizza Guy says Spicoli's pizza is a double cheese and sausage but there's no sausage on the pizza.

When the little kid wets his pants, Santa's knee is completely soaked but the kid's pants are dry.

During the "No shirt no shoes no dice" scene when the camera goes back to Spicoli saying no dice then laughing, the guy behind him is moving his mouth along with the words then laughs when Spicoli does.

During the fantasy interview, Sean Penn can be seen repeatedly looking down and to the side, picking up his lines from cue cards.

Correction: As indicated twice in this section, Stacy mentions to a customer at Perry's Pizza an amount of $1.10. She then gives him five cents change. The $1.10 is the amount he gives her. The cash register reads $1.05. So he would, indeed, receive a nickel.



Miscellaneous

Stacy collects payment for a tab of $1.10 and provides the customer with 5 cents in change. An apparent mistake in the script, however if the customer is using pocket change it is plausible that he gave Stacy 3 quarters and 4 dimes ($1.15) and received a nickle in change.



Audio/visual unsynchronized

When Spicoli and his friends enter All American Burger and take their shirts off, Spicoli mouth is closed when he says "This one's on you dude".



Crew or equipment visible

When Brad drops Stacy off at the bowling alley, crew members can be seen reflected in the car door's window as she opens her door.

When the Pizza Guy knocks on the door, a crew member can be seen moving in the reflection of the glass.

As Rat leaves Stacy's house at night, a crew members shadow can be seen moving on the overhang of the house in the upper right corner of the screen.

When Spicoli jumps on stage to sing with the band at the dance, a camera and cameraman can be seen in the lower left part of the picture.

When Jefferson parks his car in the beginning of the movie, a light can be seen reflected in the finish of his car in the extreme lower right hand corner of the screen.



Plot holes

After Spicoli trashes Jefferson's car, how does he drive it to Ridgemont High? It couldn't run with most of the front being completely crushed, and having a tow-truck bring it there would have exposed him.



Boom mic visible

When the robber hits the cookies off of the counter in the Mi-T-Mart, the boom can be seen moving in the window reflection.

As Brad is attempting to open the safe in the convenience store, the boom mic can be seen moving in the reflection of the window.



Character error

Mr. Hand tells the students that the Platt Amendment is an Amendment to the US Constitution and is vital in their daily lives. The Platt Amendment is neither a Constitutional Amendment nor is it important in Americans' daily lives. The Platt Amendment established Cuba as a US protectorate after the USA helped free Cuba from Spanish rule during the 1898 Spanish-American War. Furthermore, it was passed in 1901, not 1906 as he claims.

When Mr. Hand is giving the class a hard time about their scores on their quiz about the Platt Amendment, he says the amendment was introduced by Senator John Platt, that it passed in 1906, and that it was an amendment to the US Constitution. He trails off when he notices that Spicoli is absent, and starts talking about his generation's fascination with truancy. The Platt Amendment was not a 1906 amendment to the US Constitution. It was an amendment to the 1901 Army Appropriations bill having to do with conditions for unilateral US intervention in Cuba. Its author was Connecticut Senator Oliver Platt, not John Platt, which Mr. Hand would know.

Outside the theater, Mark Ratner is informing patrons, "Smoking is upstairs to the left..." Clearly visible in the box office window behind Mike Damone is a "No Smoking" sign. However, the 'no smoking' sign is referring to the lower level seats, which is precisely why Rat says smoking is "upstairs."

At the beginning, when the kids are buying the concert tickets, it is said the tickets normally would cost $12.50, so two would be $25. The tickets are sold for $20 each ($40 total), and he says he made $16, when actually he only made $15.

Brad's girlfriend Lisa is seen in Mr Hand's History class with Stacy. Brad's girlfriend is a Senior. She would not be in the same history class as a Freshman. Not a goof- classes like science, history, art that are electives can usually be taken at any time- as a freshman could be in a science class with other grades including seniors.