Martin Scorsese's picture appears on a wanted poster in the subway station. The poster says "Wanted For Sacrilege". This was during the controversy surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
The song was originally intended to be a duet between Jackson and Prince. Prince would have played Wesley Snipes's character in the video. According to Prince, he was uncomfortable with the opening line "Your butt is mine" and turned the song down.
In a 2015 interview, Wesley Snipes claimed that Michael Jackson was unnerved by the raucous fans around the shooting location. According to Snipes, he became Jackson's "de facto bodyguard" for the duration of the shoot.
The video is apparently heavily influenced by West Side Story (1961)'s "Cool" song-and-dance sequence which is also staged in a parking garage. Jackson was a huge fan of the movie.
Writer Richard Price was inspired by the story of Edmund Perry. Perry was an honor student at a prestigious school who was shot to death while allegedly trying to mug a plainclothes police officer. The story was a media sensation in New York City in 1985.