"Ramon," the often-malfunctioning animatronic alligator used in the film, was later donated to the Florida Gators of the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL as a team mascot. Ramon made several appearances before games and during halftime.
Robert Forster improvised the jokes in regard to his receding hairline, which a delighted John Sayles wrote into the script during shooting for the other characters.
John Sayles read Frank Ray Perilli's script for the film once and then totally scrapped it. Sayles said it was set in Milwaukee and explained that the alligator grew gigantic because of beer from a brewery going into the sewers.
The shot of the SWAT team emerging from the sewers in the film looked so real that people actually thought they were terrorists and some of them even called the police.