FILM · 2018 · USA
Truth or Dare
50 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (50)
- #001
The menacing grin that comes with the lethal Truth or Dare power is called the Willem Dafoe grin, and it is partly inspired by his menacing smile and by the disfigurement of the Gustavo grin on the face.
- #002
Very little computer adjustment was needed to create the smiles on Tyler Posey's and Lucy Hale's faces; Wadlow said the increase was only 5% for the two of them.
- #003
To get Jason Blum to sign on to the film, Jeff Wadlow told him nothing except the title and the opening sequence.
- #004
The game of Truth or Dare has been recorded for centuries, with its earliest history dating to 1712, suggesting its origin was a Christmas game of questions and commands.
- #005
Tyler Posey was found able to do much of the wide facial grin he learned for his role in Teen Wolf (2011) without the need for CGI.
- #006
Before the CGI rendering of the face, the actors had to imitate the facial structure of the Calux grin.
- #007
An unrated version of the film was released, featuring the characters' more horrific death scenes, the initially prolonged dare scene at the Rosarito Mission, and a more racist sex scene between Olivia (Lucy Hale) and Lucas (Tyler Posey).
- #008
Although the main characters graduate from college, Hayden Szeto and Nolan Gerard Funk are 32 and 31 years old, and only Violett Beane, at 21, remains closest to a young adult.
- #009
Jeff Wadlow had been drawing scary grins since high school, and after becoming acquainted with Snapchat's face-swapping filters, he was inspired to give the Calux presence such a grimace as it takes control of the characters.
- #010
The cast spent a single night in Mexico shooting and bonding together as a group of friends.
- #011
(About 5 minutes) The iPhone footage of the actors that opens the film was shot by the actors themselves while they were on vacation in Mexico, as seen on The IMDb Show (2017).
- #012
Tyler Posey was initially unavailable when Jeff Wadlow wanted him for a role, and as soon as he became available he was the last young lead cast, because Wadlow believed that, unlike many others, he is an actor who can display great strength and vulnerability.
- #013
Tyler Posey and Sophia Ali, who met through the film, would go on to date during the production of Truth or Dare.
- #014
The mission in Rosarito, Mexico does not exist and is in fact a set built on a controlled sound stage.
- #015
At the beginning of the film, Olivia is asked whether, if aliens came to kill them, she would save her friends and kill the entire population of Mexico, or let her friends die and save the people of Mexico. She chooses to let her friends die, but at the end of the film she chooses to save her friends by making a video asking people truth or dare and putting it on the internet, so that when they die and do not want to die, it will not be their turn. However, by doing this she could have killed millions of people instead of allowing the game to end forever by killing only two more people.
- #016
Tyler Posey said that shooting the sex scenes was very difficult for him and Lucy Hale because they made each other laugh while doing the creepy smiles.
- #017
While shooting their scenes in Mexico, the cast took part in a real game of Truth or Dare, and Lucy Hale was the only central cast member who did not join in at that late hour, choosing to sleep instead.
- #018
The film's outcome has Olivia delaying her own and Markie's survival by starting others on Truth or Dare through the video she uploads to YouTube from the dare. This points to the possible genocide of most of humanity without Calux's control and the tongue Olivia sacrificed.
- #019
The cast actually recorded the opening road trip and spring break montage.
- #020
The entity behind the game is a demonic force named Calux, based on Calax, a popular imagination demon of transgressive art depicted in formatted images.
- #021
Truth or Dare features a body count of 8: the Woman at the Gas Station, Ronnie, Tyson Curran, Giselle Hammond, Penelope Amari, Brad Chang, Sam Meehan and Lucas Moreno.
- #022
The cast actually played a real game of Truth or Dare during filming, which led to Tyler Posey being dared to jump into an equally freezing swimming pool in freezing temperatures.
- #023
The film was pitched to Jason Blum and Blumhouse by Michael Moses, who handled Universal's worldwide marketing, as nothing more than a title.
- #024
The game itself works by rules: 1. Among the players, Truth can be chosen only twice before the game automatically sets the next chosen participant to Dare. 2. The game passes from group to group. 3. The game's Truth is designed to turn others against each other and to establish complete honesty in the character. 4. Dares are physically dangerous challenges that usually result in serious bodily harm or death. 5. Refusing the options results in a gruesome death.
- #025
The distorted faces caused by the power were designed to resemble Snapchat's strange morphs and various phone photo app filters, particularly the Big Eyes, Big Mouth filter.
- #026
(About 1 min.) The brand of cigarettes the girl asks the cashier for at the start of the film is the same brand smoked by the Cigarette Smoking Man in The X-Files (1993).
- #027
Lucy Hale was the first actor confirmed to appear in the film.
- #028
Because Markie and Olivia survive the film, it is one of the few slasher horror films that does not kill off the blonde best-friend heroine.
- #029
Several of the photos on the walls of Olivia's house show figures whose face shapes have been altered, similar to the face transformations the game offers.
- #030
Tyler Posey and Lucy Hale both appeared as prominent Ghostface victims, Hale in Scream 4 (2011) and Posey in the 2018 third season of the MTV series Scream: The TV Series (2015).
- #031
Jeff Wadlow cites Scream (1996) as the plot template for the film because its body count, death scenes and horror rely more on a strong story and spirit than on gruesome body parts.
- #032
The game was designed not only as a lethal, destructive force but also as a challenging mix of character and honesty, touching on the sexuality of Hayden Szeto's character Brad Chang and his opposition to his father and to Olivia, and on the resolutions in Markie and Lucas's complicated love triangle.
- #033
Violett Beane dyed her hair blonde for the role of Markie.
- #034
The filming of the Truth or Dare game played in the ruins of the mission took two days.
- #035
(About 16 minutes) The series of dares at the naked Rosarito Mission at the start of the film is actually not the body of actor Tyler Posey but that of his stunt double, though no real nudity appears in the extended director's cut, only an extension of the nude silhouetted figure. It turned out that there was too much time for makeup during that shoot for the vast majority of Posey's body tattoos, and his double was called in instead.
- #036
The film's Mexico scenes were shot in Rosarito, Mexico.
- #037
The film was initially scheduled to be released on April 27, 2018, but in January 2018 the release was moved forward by two weeks from its original premiere date of April 27, 2018 to April 13, 2018. This was probably done to avoid competition with the eagerly awaited Avengers: Infinity War (2018), which was to be released on April 27, 2018.
- #038
Filming in Atlanta, Georgia coincided with Tyler Posey's role as Shane in the third season of Scream: The TV Series (2015), which was also shot in Atlanta.
- #039
The game itself is started during the opening mission in Mexico and can only be passed on by a previous player to other players made up of a group of people.
- #040
It is the eleventh collaboration between Universal and Blumhouse Productions.
- #041
It is the first Blumhouse film whose title includes the name of Jason Blum's distribution company.
- #042
The premiere was held in Argentina and Australia, one day earlier than the Friday the 13th release in other territories.
- #043
Tyler Posey, Sophia Ali and Nolan Gerard Funk had all previously appeared in an MTV original series: Posey as Scott McCall in Teen Wolf (2011), Ali as Sabrina in Faking It (2014), and Funk as Collin Jennings in Awkward (2011).
- #044
Hayden Szeto originally auditioned for the role of Lucas.
- #045
Stars Hayden Szeto and Morgan Lindholm had previously appeared together in the unreleased short film Never Have I Ever (2016), which also centered on a popular party game.
- #046
Tom Choi appeared alongside Tyler Posey in Teen Wolf (2011).
- #047
It is the second teen slasher horror film to feature Lucy Hale, who had previously appeared in Scream 4 (2011).
- #048
It is Jeff Wadlow's first true teen slasher horror film since Cry Wolf (2005), in which all the eligible body-count victims turned out to be fake in the style of April Fool's Day (1986).
- #049
It is the second teen slasher horror film released after Tamara (2005) to feature a same-sex kiss. Although the film also includes a same-sex kiss between Lucy Hale's Olivia and Sophia Ali's Penelope, such a kiss had been depicted in the genre before.
- #050
Carter's real identity shares the same name as Ronnie's real-life identity: Sam.
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