Ask anyone to name an 80s comedy about time travel, and the first one that comes to their mind will probably be Back to the Future. However, coming up a close second is 1989’s most triumphant, laugh-a-minute extravaganza, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

With a low budget, a weird concept and two total unknown lead actors, few could have anticipated director Stephen Herek’s film having quite the impact that it did, spawning a franchise that included 1991 sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, plus all manner of spin-offs in other media.

Now is a good time to look back, as 2020 sees the release of long-anticipated second sequel Bill & Ted Face the Music. So join us now as we head back through the circuits of time to unearth some facts you might not have known about this time-hopping teen comedy classic…

25. Keanu Reeves thought Ted would be the only role he’d be remembered for

Keanu Reeves was 25 years old and had been in the business for around five years when he landed the role of Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan.

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Director Stephen Herek recalls bringing Reeves in to audition and immediately thinking “‘Wow, he’s Ted’… there was a sort of lovable goofiness to him.”

True enough, for much of the 90s, audiences had difficulty separating Reeves from his Ted persona, making it hard for some viewers to accept him in less comedic roles like Johnny Utah in Point Break, Jack Traven in Speed and Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

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Reeves recognised this, and once joked that he feared that on his death his headstone would read, “Here lies Keanu Reeves. He played Ted.”

However, at the end of the 90s, Reeves successfully found a new career-redefining role in Thomas Anderson/Neo, of 1999’s The Matrix and its two sequels. (A fourth Matrix movie is in production at the time of writing.)

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And of course, to movie fans these days, Reeves is equally synonymous with the titular hero of the John Wick series.



24. The film originally featured a time-travelling van

You can’t talk about time-travelling comedies of the 1980s without talking about Back to the Future.

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In its concept alone, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure immediately invites comparison with Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 classic.

Still, if the creators had stuck with the first draft of the Bill & Ted script, the similarities might have been even greater between it and Back to the Future.

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The original idea of screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon was for Bill and Ted to travel through time in a 1969 Chevy van.

However, the producers were not unreasonably worried that this was too close to Back to the Future, in which the time machine was of course a DeLorean sports car.

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Going back to the drawing board, it was ultimately decided to give Bill and Ted a time-travelling phone booth – although this too is a nod to the vehicle of another notable time traveller, TV’s Doctor Who.

23. The film almost didn’t get released after the production company went bankrupt

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was financed by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, an independent studio behind such films as Manhunter, Near Dark and Evil Dead II.

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However, while many of the company’s films are considered classics today, they weren’t doing well financially at the time, and the studio went bankrupt soon after Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was completed.

For a time, Bill & Ted seemed doomed. Director Stephen Herek recalls, “Everybody [hated] the movie… Somebody wanted to say that it was going to go straight to video and it’s not even worth the cost of the videotape.”

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Happily, the rights to Excellent Adventure wound up going to Orion Pictures, who had a little more faith in the material.

Actor Alex Winter recalls that an early test screening “went over like gangbusters,” and after that the film’s theatrical release was secured.

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However, some dialogue had to be re-recorded late in the day. The film was originally shot and set in 1987, not 1988 as in the released movie – and even then, it didn’t wind up on screens until 1989!

22. Alex Winter still gets ‘thank you’ letters from History teachers (and complaints from English teachers!)

Like Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter was a relatively unknown actor in his early 20s when cast in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

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However, Winter did come to the role of Bill S. Preston Esq. with one major hit to his name, having appeared as the vampire Marko in 1987’s The Lost Boys.

Winter – who has worked primarily as a director since the first two Bill & Ted movies – says he has received many letters of praise from high school history teachers over the years.

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These educators have thanked Winter for helping kids want to take more interest in researching past historical figures, just as Bill and Ted did.

However, Winter says he also gets angry letters from English teachers, who complain that Bill and Ted’s simplistic means of self-expression has also affected the way students speak!

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We’re not sure that last charge is entirely fair: after all, Bill and Ted make proper use of some juicy words like “heinous,” “distinguished,” “resplendent” and so on.

21. A fan won the phone booth in a Nintendo magazine competition

For really serious film fans, few items are more desired than actual memorabilia that appeared on-screen in a popular movie.

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In the case of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, surely the single most iconic piece of memorabilia must be the pivotal time-travelling phone booth.

One fan of the movie wound up the lucky owner of the original Excellent Adventure phone booth thanks to a video game magazine contest.

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The coveted item was offered up as a prize by Nintendo Power Magazine in 1991, to tie in with the release of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure.

The winner of this most excellent contest was one Kenneth Grayson, who would years later be quizzed on the matter on Reddit.

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The Reddit thread makes for an entertaining and occasionally eyebrow-raising read, as Grayson describes at length how owning the booth impacted him personally (and that includes his love life…).

20. Reeves and Winter also voiced Bill and Ted in the animated TV series

2020’s Bill & Ted Face the Music has widely been said to be the third time Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter have played Bill and Ted – but this isn’t quite true.

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The actors first reprised their roles in the largely forgotten animated TV series Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures.

This cartoon hit the small screen in 1990, the year before Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was released.

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Winter and Reeves were joined in the ‘toon by George Carlin, who also returned to provide the voice of Rufus.

The three actors lent their vocal duties to the first season of the cartoon, for which 13 episodes were produced.

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In 1991, a second season of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures was produced with different voice actors. This ended after eight episodes.

19. There was a live-action TV spin-off

After animated series Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures ended, there was another TV show bearing that same title, this time in live action.

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Actors Christopher Kennedy and Evan Richards, who had voiced Bill and Ted on the second season of the cartoon, returned to play the roles on camera.

Rick Overton took over from George Carlin as Rufus, whilst Lisa Wilcox (known for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 4 and 5) was the new Missy.

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Disregarding the events of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the show kept our heroes in high school and followed them on further time-travelling adventures.

However, the ratings were low and the critics were harsh, and the live-action Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures didn’t last long.

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Only eight episodes were produced, and the show was promptly forgotten, not unlike such other movie-based 90s sitcoms as Ferris Bueller and Revenge of the Nerds.

18. Bill & Ted breakfast cereal used to be a thing

When Bill & Ted merchandising was at its peak, the characters were perhaps inevitably the face of a breakfast cereal.

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Released as a tie-in with the TV cartoon series in 1990, it was naturally named Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal.

Produced by Ralston, the cereal consisted of cinnamon-flavoured toasted oat squares and marshmallow pieces shaped like musical notes.

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Boxes came with such free prizes as Hysterical (Not Historical) Postcards, Time Travel Luggage Tags, Dial-A-Dude phone number organisers and plastic cassette cases.

However, the actors were not particularly well-compensated for their likeness being used on the boxes: as Alex Winter wryly recalls, “The cereal was particularly tragic… Not the most nutritious food item. And it was weird.”

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“To walk into a supermarket when you’re basically a regular schmo living in Venice in a s***ty apartment – we weren’t making the kind of money that actors make today for that kind of stuff – and there you are on a cereal box.”

17. Eddie Van Halen says he would have joined Wyld Stallyns if asked

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure famously sees Reeves and Winter’s hapless musicians plotting to enlist Eddie Van Halen to join their band Wyld Stallyns.

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The eponymous lead guitarist of legendary heavy metal band Van Halen was widely regarded the best rock musician in the world at the time.

After seeing the movie, the guitar hero reportedly joked he would have joined Wyld Stallyns if they’d asked.

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One wonders if he was entirely kidding, as despite the huge success enjoyed by Van Halen, the band has had a rather tumultuous history.

Original lead vocalist David Lee Roth left the band over personality clashes in 1984. Roth was replaced by Sammy Hagar – with whom the band also fell out by 1996.

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After being briefly fronted by Extreme singer Gary Cherone, Van Halen have since reunited with both Hagar and Roth at different times, but never with the same success as in their early days.

16. George Carlin wasn’t cast as Rufus until the shoot was almost over

While Eddie Van Halen says he would have considered joining Wyld Stallyns, it turns out the filmmakers did briefly have him in mind for a role in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: that of Rufus.

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Rufus is a pivotal character, the wise figure from the future who travels back to San Dimas, 1988 to help Bill and Ted secure their destiny.

However, up until quite late in production, the filmmakers still hadn’t cast the role, and didn’t know who to go with.

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As well as Van Halen, a number of other major rock stars were considered for the role, including Ringo Starr of The Beatles and Roger Daltrey of The Who.

At one point, even James Bond legend Sean Connery was on the wish list to play Rufus – as was Charlie Sheen, bizarrely.

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Ultimately someone hit upon the idea of casting stand-up comedy legend George Carlin, and the rest is history.

15. ZZ Top were asked to play the Three Most Important People

One key scene in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure sees the not-so dynamic duo accidentally wind up 600 years in the future.

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Here, they get a glimpse of the utopian society that has been constructed under the influence of their music.

While there, they encounter the Three Most Important People. Whilst we learn basically nothing about these people, it’s clear they have a major role to play in this new world.

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Fittingly given the film’s rock’n’roll theme, director Stephen Herek originally wanted to cast arguably the most famous power trio of the 80s: ZZ Top.

Herek recalls this didn’t happen as “dealing with rock stars is always a huge problem” – although he still managed to cast some bona fide rockers in the roles.

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Ultimately the Three Most Important People became Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Fee Waybill of the Tubes and Martha Davis of the Motels.

14. A completely different opening with a musical number was shot for the film

We first meet Bill and Ted when they’re in the garage shooting a Wyld Stallyns promo video (if we can call it that).

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However, the film was at one point going to have a radically different, far more lavish opening sequence.

Director Stephen Herek shot an elaborate musical-style scene which followed Bill and Ted on their way to school, doing air guitar.

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Winter says the scene saw Reeves and himself, “at a bus stop waiting for the bus to go to school, and we break into this air-guitar dance number – this whole elaborate, choreographed thing” – which, in another rock’n’roll connection, the actors rehearsed in a dance studio at the home of singer Stevie Nicks.

“We’re just like in our heads, with our music and our passion, and then we get in the bus and they make fun of us. And there’s this whole scene in the bus on our way to school that day, and that’s how the movie opens. All that went the way of the dodo.”

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Exactly why the entire sequence was scrapped is unclear, but reportedly Reeves has no memory of shooting it, and director Stephen Herek doesn’t like to talk about it.

13. The original ending was reshot because it was so boring

While he may have cut the original opening of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in favour of something less theatrical, director Stephen Herek wound up doing the opposite with the ending.

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The original climax as scripted and shot saw our heroes simply deliver a basic history report in their classroom.

After this, our heroes proceeded to take the two medieval princesses to the prom, whilst dressed in tuxedos with shorts.

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However, everyone including director Stephen Herek agreed that this ending was “underwhelming” and “needed to be a bit more operatic.”

Happily, the production was able to scrape together the funds necessary to shoot the larger, rock concert-esque history report sequence that made the final film.

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Reeves reflects, “It was cool that resources were made available to shoot the ending that’s in the [final cut] to give it some more scale, to tie in all the characters.”

12. Paulie Shore auditioned for both lead roles

A great many young actors were considered for the lead roles of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

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One of those who didn’t make the grade went on to make a splash in the early 90s: one Pauly Shore.

The actor and comedian was, like Reeves and Winter, largely unknown at the time of his Bill & Ted audition.

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However, two years after the release of Excellent Adventure, Shore found fame via a movie that owed a significant debt to Bill & Ted: the 1991 comedy Encino Man (AKA California Man).

With his uniquely nasal, self-consciously annoying performance style, Shore soon became one of the most simultaneously loved and hated figures in Hollywood.

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It was also rumoured that Shore’s 1996 movie Bio-Dome was originally devised as a third Bill & Ted movie, but this claim has been discredited as bogus (literally).

11. The director turned down the sequel because he thought it was too dark

After the success of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, sequel plans quickly got underway – but one key figure from the original did not return.

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That was director Stephen Herek, who decided to pass on the second Bill & Ted movie because he didn’t like the direction that writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon were going in.

The script that eventually became Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was initially entitled Bill & Ted Go to Hell, and Herek felt it was “mean-spirited.”

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As anyone’s who’s seen the sequel will recall, it does get a bit darker than the first film, with our heroes killed off and forced to traverse the afterlife.

In Herek’s absence, director Pete Hewitt took over behind the camera, and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was almost as big a hit as its predecessor.

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Herek, meanwhile, went on to direct such hits as Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, The Mighty Ducks and The Three Musketeers.

10. It was originally ‘Bill & Ted & Bob’

It’s hard now to envisage anyone other than Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves as Bill and Ted.

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However, in their earliest incarnation, the characters were performed on stage by screenwriters Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson.

Solomon and Matheson made up the characters as part of a comedy improv class they were taking in the mid-80s.

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Moreover, in this earliest version of events it wasn’t just a duo but a trio, with a third character named Bob.

In these ad-libbed sketches, the three ill-informed youngsters would talk about current events without actually knowing what they were talking about.

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However, the actor playing Bob pulled out after the first few performances, leaving Matheson and Solomon to further develop Bill and Ted on their own as a duo.

9. The original plot saw Bill and Ted starting major historical incidents like the sinking of the Titanic

In its original conception, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure had a different, perhaps less upbeat tone.

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Originally the dim-witted duo’s travels through time saw them inadvertently cause such historical catastrophes as the sinking of the Titanic and the spread of the Black Plague.

While some of this may have been ditched due to similarity with the movie Time Bandits (which also features the Titanic), changes were also prompted by the casting of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.

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Bill and Ted were originally envisaged as nerdy, perhaps less sympathetic characters who were unpopular at school, not unlike later TV icons Beavis and Butthead.

However, because of the innate likeability of Reeves and Winter, the filmmakers knew they had to rethink things.

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8. San Dimas referenced the film in its 50th anniversary celebrations

Prior to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, it’s fair to say that most people outside of California had never heard of the city of San Dimas.

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However, the 1989 comedy hit forever established San Dimas as the home of Bill and Ted in the memories of audiences worldwide.

Famously, the final history report scene sees students tackle the question of how great figures from history would find life in San Dimas.

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The movie also suggests that, six hundred years in the future, San Dimas will be one of the most important cities on Earth thanks to its association with Bill and Ted.

Curiously, it seems that the city today celebrates the fame that it has enjoyed since Bill & Ted’s Excellent adventure.

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San Dimas celebrated 50 years of incorporation in 2010, and the official slogan for the celebration was “San Dimas, 1960 – 2010 – An excellent adventure!”

7. Reeves and Winter were cast after they were spotted messing around in a McDonald’s queue

The casting process for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was intensive, with literally hundreds of actors seen for the lead roles.

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For a time, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter were just two among a vast number of young actors under consideration.

Screenwriters Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson have a great memory of the moment they knew Winter and Reeves were the duo they had to go with.

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During pre-production, the writers had gone into a nearby McDonald’s for a bite, when Winter and Reeves walked in together.

Reportedly the actors were messing around in a way that perfectly captured the spirit of the characters.

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The writers are said to have immediately remarked to one another, “Those guys should be Bill and Ted!”

6. The phone booth was nicknamed ‘The Death Box’ because filming in it was so unpleasant

Bill and Ted having a time-travelling phone booth was an interesting twist for audiences used to seeing more formidable-looking time machines in their movies.

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However, by all accounts the booth itself didn’t necessarily make for the most pleasant working environment for the cast.

Reportedly Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves wound up giving the booth the less-than-flattering nickname of ‘The Death Box.’

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Winter recalls, “We’re all in a regular phone booth with our boiling-hot costumes and varying degrees of body odors intermingling, you know?”

As for the rollercoaster ride circuits of time sequences: “there were nine or ten of us teetering on this thing, duct-taped to a hydraulic unit against a green screen in a studio in outer Tempe, Arizona, like a death ride canoe from the worst carny ride you’ve ever been on.”

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Between the smells and the motion sickness, it definitely sounds like the worst part of shooting the film.

5. The film was so popular in Germany that it altered their language

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a beloved film no matter where in the world you go, but it might surprise you to know that it was particularly popular in Germany.

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The German dub of the film actually became a cult classic in its own right, to the point where it started affecting the German language itself.

For starters, the German Bill & Ted coined the words ‘hoschi’ and ‘granatenstark’, which mean ‘dude’ and ‘excellent’ respectively.

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No translation of these words had ever existed in Germany before, but they became commonly used after the movie.

As if that wasn’t enough, the phrase ‘volle kanne, hoschi’ meaning ‘party on, dude’, became popular among German youths after the movie came out.

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The German Bill & Ted’s translation of ‘be excellent to each other’ also has a profound ring to it, as translated out of German it actually means ‘colourful and excellent is the being’.

4. It’s one of three productions to star Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln together

After watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, it’s easy to assume that the collection of historical figures have never been seen on screen together before.

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You would be right to think that the full cast of famous people from history have never all appeared together, but certain pair-ups are actually more common than you might think.

Specifically, several projects involving time travel have brought Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln together on screen.

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If for some reason you want to watch something else involving the two historical figures after watching Bill & Ted, you only have to tune into Clone High.

Clone High, an animated adult sitcom that began in 2002, sees several famous figures of history go to high school together.

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If that’s not enough, there’s always the Star Trek: The Original Series episode The Savage Curtain, where Lincoln and Khan (Genghis, not Noonien Singh) also appear together.

3. The script was written in just four days

The characters of Bill and Ted were originally born and developed in an improv group, so when it came to making a movie, a lot of their story had been developed already.

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That made writing a script a lot easier, since the premise of two high schoolers who knew nothing about history was already established.

Still, even though writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon weren’t starting completely from scratch when they wrote the Excellent Adventure script, it’s still surprising just how quickly it got written.

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Solomon and Matheson took just four days to write the script from beginning to end, and they did it all by hand too.

The pair spent part of each day holding meetings at various local coffee shops, and that’s where the bulk of the writing got done.

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That might explain the uniquely fast and funny pace of the film, since both of them must have been seriously caffeinated after a week of coffee shop writing sessions.

2. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter looked so cool that the characters were changed from nerds

While a lot was already known about Bill and Ted by writers Matheson and Solomon, some things had to be changed before the characters could be put to screen.

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Many things shifted and developed throughout pre-production, but some changes happened exclusively because of the casting of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.

The first thing that changed was who was playing who, since both actors originally auditioned for the opposite part to the one they ended up with.

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Reeves and Winter only found out that the producers had decided to swap them around when they showed up to wardrobe and were given the other character’s signature clothes.

The other change is that the characters were originally supposed to be losers, who the popular kids in high school hated and bullied.

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Reportedly one scene was shot in which Bill and Ted were sneered at by the popular kids at school, but as Ed Solomon recalls, “once you cast Alex and Keanu, who look like pretty cool guys, that was hard to believe.”

1. It was never supposed to be a sci-fi movie

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a difficult film to categorise in many ways, thanks to its wacky premise.

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With that said, the inclusion of time travel puts it solidly in the science fiction category, at least according to the writers.

Hilariously though, writer Chris Matheson actually didn’t want to write a sci-fi movie, and tried as hard as possible to move away from the genre.

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The time travel idea was just one of several skits he made up, for an earlier draft of the film that was entirely made up of different sketches.

It was Chris’ father Richard Matheson, a famous author and film writer in his own right, who pointed out that the time travel skit deserved to be its own movie. Chris agreed, and reluctantly committed to making a science fiction project, even though he swore he wouldn’t touch the genre due to his father making a lot of sci-fi work.

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