* Dustin Hoffman was reputedly the original choice to play Deckard.

* Deborah Harry was reputedly the original choice to play Pris.

* The shooting of the film was supposedly such a strain on the cast and crew that crew members had T-Shirts made saying "WILL ROGERS NEVER MET RIDLEY SCOTT" (a reference to Will Rogers' famous statement that he never met a man he didn't like).

* While the film is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the title comes from a book by Alan Nourse called "The Bladerunner". William S. Burroughs wrote a screenplay based on the Nourse book, and a novella entitled "Blade Runner: A Movie." Ridley Scott bought the rights to the title but not the screenplay or the book. The Burroughs composition defines a blade runner as a person who sells illegal surgical instruments.

* Philip K. Dick claimed that footage of the film was exactly what he had envisioned when he wrote the book. However, Ridley Scott, who was notorious for having gotten exactly the visual look he wanted, claimed to have never read Dick's source novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

* Exasperated crews often referred to the film as "Blood Runner".

* The Bradbury, the building used in the final chase scene between Decker and Roy, was the same building used in the 1964 episode of the original "The Outer Limits" (1963) titled "The Demon With a Glass Hand" starring Robert Culp.

* The ending that features Deckard and Rachael driving in the countryside contains unused footage from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980).

* "They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper. That was my profession. Ex-cop. Ex-blade runner. Ex-killer."

* "Sushi. Cold Fish! That's what my ex-wife used to call me"

* "The charmer's name was Gaff, I'd seen him around. Bryant must have upped him to the Blade Runner unit. That gibberish he talked was city speak, gutter talk. A mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you. I didn't really need a translator, I knew the lingo, every good cop did. But I wasn't going to make it easier for him."

* "Skin jobs. That's what Bryant called Replicants. In history books he's the kind of cop who used to call black men n***ers."

* "I'd quit because I'd had a belly full of killing. But then I'd rather be a killer than a victim, and that's exactly what Bryant's threat about little people meant. So I hooked in once more thinking if I couldn't take it I'd split later. I didn't have to worry about Gaff. He was brown nosing for a promotion, so he didn't want me around anyway."

* "Tyrell really did a job on Rachael. Right down to a snapshot of a mother she never had...a daughter she never was. Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings...neither were Blade Runners. What the hell was happening to me? Leon's pictures had to be as phony as Rachael's. I didn't know why a Replicant would collect photos. Maybe they were like Rachael...they need memories."

* "The report would be routine retirement of a Replicant. Which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back. There it was again...feeling in myself...for her...for Rachael."

* "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life...anybody's life...my life. All he'd wanted was the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do is sit there and watch him die."

* "Gaff had been there and let her live. Four years, he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me she was special, no termination date. I didn't know how long we had together...who does?"

More quotations from WikiQuote

* In the sequence where Deckard and Gaff approach police headquarters in a spinner, a model of the Millennium Falcon (Harrison Ford's spaceship in Star Wars (1977)), disguised as a building, can be seen in the lower left corner of the frame. The model was a personal project of one of the film's model builders, and was used as a building at the last minute.

* A model of the Dark Star spaceship from the film Dark Star (1974) is also used as a building. It can be seen behind the Asian billboard when Gaff's spinner is approaching the Police building.

* The mold used for the rooftop of the Police Headquarters building was originally a mold used in the Special Edition of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). It is the saucer-like ceiling Richard Dreyfuss stands under after he enters the Mothership.

* Philip K. Dick's ideal choice for Rachel was Victoria Principal.

* According to a vintage "Starburst magazine" of the time, James Caan was also a possible for the role of Rick Deckard.

* The computer screen in Gaff's police spinner shows the same computer sequence (with the word "Purge") that the Nostromo displays in the film Alien (1979) (also directed by Ridley Scott).

* The movie was given poor ratings by most critics in 1982, including Siskel & Ebert. In 1992, the two critics re-evaluated their attitudes toward the film and gave it two enthusiastic thumbs-up.

* A female gymnast was hired as a stunt double for Daryl Hannah in the scene where Pris attacks Deckard, but director Ridley Scott rehearsed the scene so many times that when they were ready to shoot the scene she was too exhausted to do anything. The scene was filmed with a male gymnast that they had been able to track down.

* Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer)'s odd meld of "father" and "fucker" after he says to Tyrell, "I want more life" is deliberate. Hauer was instructed to pronounce it in such a way that it could be both.

* When Gaff talks to Deckard in the Japanese restaurant he speaks partly in Hungarian, he says: "Azonnal kövessen engem" which means "Follow me immediately", and "Lófasz" which means something terribly rude. Evidently, Hungarian moviegoers find this fantastically funny. Gaff continues in Hungarian. He says, "Nehogy mar, te vagy a Blade Runner," which means, "No way, you are the Blade Runner." After this, he switches to another language.

* Deckard's apartment, drawn by set designer Charles Breen and built on stage at Warner Bros., was inspired by the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Ennis-Brown House in Los Angeles. Breen actually had plaster casts taken from the textile blocks of the Wright-designed house and used them for the walls in the stage set.

* In the final scene where Deckard believes Rachael to be dead, there are televisions in the background which have interference superimposed on them and the eerie wind noise, both effects are taken from Alien (1979), a previous Ridley Scott film.

* When Deckard (Harrison Ford) stops Rachael (Sean Young) from leaving his apartment, he pushes her away from him. The expression of pain and shock on her face was real. She said Ford pushed her too hard and she was angry with him.

* In a survey conducted by the UK newspaper The Guardian in 2004, 60 scientists selected this movie as the best science fiction movie of all time, just ahead of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

* It has been rumored for years that Harrison Ford purposefully gave a bad reading of the voiceover narration added during post production in hopes that the studio wouldn't use it. Ford has denied this vehemently.

* There are at least three major drafts of the screenplay. While they all have the same storyline, many details differ between them. The first draft, dated July 24, 1980, was written by Hampton Fancher alone. It refers to replicants as "androids" and makes it clear that Deckard is human; at one point, he has a physical, hoping to qualify for an off-world flight.

* The Voight-Kampff test can spot "androids" after five or six questions, (not the thirty questions required in later drafts); Rachael is detected after thirteen questions, not a hundred. Deckard recognizes Zhora fairly quickly in this draft (her appearance has changed in later drafts).

* The fifth "android" Mary has a part in this draft. Instead of finding Tyrell at the Tyrell building, Batty goes to Tyrell's mansion, and he kills Tyrell, along with his bodyguard, a maid, and his entire family; he kills Sebastian later. Deckard kills Mary, Pris, and Batty. Deckard and Rachael escape from the city.

* In the woods in the country, Deckard kills Rachael, knowing that another Blade Runner would have done it sooner or later.

* The second draft, dated December 22, 1980, was co-written by David Webb Peoples. It does not have the chess game featured in the final film, but it is the most cohesive of the three draft (there are no continuity problems, and the story is virtually complete, with details missing from the final film).

* Batty and company are known as replicants by this time. Also, a sixth replicant, Hodge, is in the mix; he attacks Batty and Gaff at Leon's flat. Mary is also in this draft; as before, she is killed by Deckard in Sebastian's apartment.

* Chew is shown after he freezes to death. In this draft, the Tyrell Corporation is called "the Nekko Corporation". Instead of praising Deckard's skills as a Blade Runner, Bryant chastises him for shooting a replicant in public view after Deckard kills Zhora.

* Leon disguises himself as a Russian in a bar sitting next to Deckard before attacking him; Deckard isn't fooled, but Leon is still faster than him, and Deckard needs to be rescued by Rachael.

* In this draft, "Tyrell" turns out to be another replicant; after Roy kills him, Roy demands that Sebastian take him to the real Tyrell, and Sebastian reveals that Tyrell has an unnamed disease and is now in hibernation unit awaiting a cure. Roy demands that Sebastian wake Tyrell up, and Sebastian reveals that Tyrell died a year ago; Roy kills Sebastian after learning this.