Beam Me Up, Scotty!: At no point does Kevin Costner's character ever say "Dry land is not a myth! I have seen it!", nor does any other character. In fact, The Mariner says the exact opposite thing: "Dry land is a myth!"
Box Office Bomb: Waterworld made $264.2 million worldwide against a production budget of $175 million (roughly $225 million in total costs). It is often cited as one of the most notorious box office failures in movie history. The truth is a bit more complicated. In The '90s, studios weren't looking at worldwide revenue all that much, considering it meaningless in the big picture, focusing entirely on the North American market. Since it made $88.2 million domestic, Waterworld was instantly hailed as a massive bomb despite its exceptional international numbers, though those were only enough to make it a mild bomb instead of a legendary one when accounting for costs like marketing, theater revenue and taxes.
Budget-Busting Element: According to Joss Whedon, the various things that drove up the budget were a functional water tank set constructed on the ocean, a personal chef for Kevin Costner, and a VFX team devoted to digitally hiding Costner's receding hairline. The result of these many expenses was the most expensive shoot in history up until the release of Titanic.
Doing It for the Art: Kevin Costner personally invested $22 million of his own money into the film. Also, when the producers threatened to cut several scenes to keep the budget under control, Costner forfeited his 15 percent cut of the gross box office receipts until the movie was profitable to placate them.
Unusually it was Costner editing with rumors of him firing Reynolds.
Relatedly, script doctor Joss Whedon says his job was taking notes from Costner.
Extremely Lengthy Creation: Paul Rader wrote the initial script in 1986 but kept it shelved until 1989. After several rewrites, Kevin Costner and Kevin Reynolds joined the project in 1992. The production proper didn't start until next year and the film wasn't ready for release before summer 1995.
Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tina Majorino nearly drowned on their first day of filming when the trimaran they were on sank, dragging them behind it.
Kevin Costner nearly died when he got caught in a squall while tied to the mast of his trimaran.
Stunt coordinator Norman Howell got hit with compression sickness during filming of an underwater scene and was rushed to a hospital in Honolulu via helicopter. He recovered quickly from the potentially life-threatening sickness and returned to the set a couple of days later.
In the TUGS segment, "Otis the Movie Star" from the Salty's Lighthouse episode, "Sound Off", Mr. Boffo and Mr. Socko while looking for a movie star, mention a movie they made entitled Underwater World.
The Simpsons episode "The Springfield Files" shows Milhouse playing a Waterworld arcade game that requires 40 quarters ($10) just to play, then immediately game overs him and asks for another 40 - an obvious jab at the film's financial problems.
Sequel in Another Medium: A sequel comic book four-issue mini-series entitled Waterworld: Children of Leviathan was released by Acclaim Comics in 1997. Kevin Costner did not permit his likeness to be used for the comics, so the Mariner looks different. The story reveals some of the Mariner's back-story as he gathers clues about where he came from and why he is different. The comic expands on the possible cause of the melting of the polar ice caps and worldwide flood, and introduces a new villain, "Leviathan", who supplied the Deacon's Smoker organization. The comic hints at the possibility that the Mariner's mutation may not be caused by evolution but by genetic engineering and that his origins may be linked to those of the "Sea Eater", the sea monster seen during the fishing scene in the film.
Star-Derailing Role: It proved to be a serious setback in Kevin Costner's career, followed up by the financial failure of The Postman two years later. Ironically, the damage caused by Waterworld feels almost ridiculous in retrospection, since the film wasn't the bomb the film industry wanted it to be and the extreme panning by critics, mostly related with production problems rather than the movie itself, made the film look much worse than it really was.
Stunt Double: Professional surfer Laird Hamilton was Kevin Costner's stunt double for many water scenes. Hamilton commuted to the set via jet ski.
Troubled Production: One of the most infamous of the 1990's (see the dedicated entry for more), nicknamed Kevin's Gate and Fishtar by the press as they heard of massive cost overruns, problems while filming (a hurricane trashed the set, actors nearly drowned) and a serious case of Wag the Director from star Kevin Costner (who insisted on massive filmsets off the coast of Hawaii, fired friend Kevin Reynolds from the director's chair, rejected Mark Isham's music as being "too ethnic", and brought in Joss Whedon for uncredited rewrites that basically boiled down to adding Costner's ideas). The negative publicity led to negative reviews and the film bombing in the US (though it performed significantly better internationally, making $176 million for a combined $264 million in total) and alongside the previous year's Wyatt Earp and the later release The Postman, sent Kevin Costner's career into a severe downturn.
Uncredited Role: Joss Whedon was an uncredited script doctor for the screenplay. He described the experience as "seven weeks of hell" and claimed that his job was taking notes from Kevin Costner.
Vindicated by Cable: Big time. Despite underperforming in the US, the film quickly picked not just a dedicated fandom but snowballed into attracting general audiences with countless reruns and being serviceable action flick. The more time have passed since the original media craze about the production and its costs, the better reception the film seems to get.
Wag the Director: According to Joss Whedon, Kevin Costner "fired" Kevin Reynolds halfway through. Costner demanded the movie to be shot in the ocean rather than in a water tank on land... which led to the construction of an expensive water tank set in the ocean. Since there were no bathrooms on the set people had to be ferried regularly to land. Throw in the fact that between takes Costner was living in a mansion with swimming pool and a cook for his personal use with all expenses covered by the producers and you'll understand that the rest of the crew was a bit upset. The result? The most expensive film ever produced until the release of Titanic (1997).
The original screenplay by Peter Rader was pitched as an children's adventure film, when he was looking for a project, he could direct himself. One producer told him that if he could come up with a good Mad Max rip-off, they had a South-African investor who would help fund this movie, so Rader conceived of an apocalyptic story set on the sea. In Rader's screenplay the Mariner was a human and the chief defender of the Atoll, whose embarrassing secret was that he enjoyed painting pictures of seahorses; Helen had two of her own children along with the adopted Enola, and the Deacon was a campy, silly villain who dressed up like King Triton, sat atop a throne on the Exxon Valdez, and punished his subordinates by slapping them around the face with a wet fish. Also, Enola's tattoo would give instructions on how to find Water's End (as Dryland was called in his script) by looking for its outline as a shadow on the moon. Subsequent rewrites by David Twohy and Joss Whedon turned the original script into a much more serious action-adventure film.
Also: The film originally had a different composer, Mark Isham, but his soundtrack was thrown out and replaced with a new score by James Newton Howard. Both scores present drastically different tones to the material, with the latter being more adventurous and upbeat sounding.
The entire slaver faction was written out when the set was destroyed.
One script (later rejected) called for a second moon to appear in the sky, intimating that the cataclysm which created Waterworld was gravity-related, rather than warming.
The 112-foot model of the Exxon Valdez sat abandoned at the Mojave Airport airplane scrapyard until August 2015, when it was partially stripped to be repurposed as set decoration for Wasteland Weekend.
be a more family-oriented film (which is low budget due to being a Roger Corman-produced B-Movie) as was originally concieved by Peter Rader, with Bruce Campbell playing the villain of the film complete with a song.