- Peter O'Toole had been signed to play the role of Dillinger/Sark, but lost interest and dropped out once he visited the set and did not see any physical scenery or tank props as described in the film's script.
- Deborah Harry was among the actresses who were screen tested for the role of Lora/Yori.
- All the live action that occurred inside the computer was filmed in black and white, and colorized later with photographic and rotoscopic techniques.
- The original plan was to have the circuit lines of the "good" programs glow yellow, and the "bad" programs would have blue circuit lines. At one point this was changed to where good programs are blue, and evil ones are red. Some of the original coloring remains, mostly in tank programs (Clu has yellow lines on his uniform, and all of Sark's tank commanders are pale green).But Flynn takes on this greenish tint after he crashes the reconizer and gets knocked out, shortly after he gets up he returns to the normal blue.
- During the ENCOM exterior shooting (where the giant door was), there had been radioactive spillage near the shoot. Cindy Morgan even stepped in a contaminated area and had to have her shoes decontaminated.
- Due to a mistake in production and emulsion ordering, there were flashing glitches randomly throughout parts of the film. They were "hidden" by simply including sound effects, so the glitches became part of the computer world's natural world!
- The poster in Alan's cubicle reads, "Gort Klaatu Barada Nikto" (a reference to the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)).
- In the "solar sailer" sequence, you'll see, for a brief moment, the silhouette of Mickey Mouse on the ground made to look like part of the terrain.
- Flynn's program is named "Clu". CLU is an old programming language.
- After Flynn escapes from the light cycles arena, it is possible to hear a "Pac-Man" video game and see a graphic on the map behind Sark in the next scene showing Sark on his command carrier "bridge".
- TRON is also a debugging command in the BASIC programming language, meaning "TRace ON." However, Steven Lisberger, has stated in interviews that he took the name from the word "electronic," and did not know about the BASIC command until later.
- Although the film was an initial failure, the arcade videogame based on it proved to be a tremendous hit and actually out-grossed the film.
- At the time, computers could generate static images, but could not automatically put them into motion. Thus, the coordinates for each image, such as a lightcycle, had to be entered for each individual frame. It took 600 coordinates to get 4 seconds of film. Each of these coordinates was entered into the computer by hand by the filmmakers.
- The CGI computer screen shown when the orange is reassembled shows the connection between Laura and her program Yori: The screen reads Program: Orange, ROM YORI, KEY YORI.
- Composer Wendy Carlos' score for the film was unavailable on CD for many years due to the severe degradation of the original analogue master tapes. By the time of the film's 20th Anniversary, techniques had been developed which allowed the tapes to be temporarily restored to a playable condition for digital re-mastering.
- The DVD commentary notes that there is almost no camera movement whatsoever in any of the shots of the electronic world with live-action characters in them. They brought in a camera and tripod with metal batwings attached, and literally nailed the camera to the floor; the camera was so locked off that "it wouldn't move even if hit by a car". The few shots with live-action characters which actually have camera movement (about a dozen shots in all) involve simple graphics or animation, such as one-color backlighting.
- Many Disney animators refused to work on this movie because they feared that computers would put them out of business. In fact, 22 years later Disney closed its hand-drawn animation studio in favor of CGI animation.
- The ENCOM laser bay was real. It was actually the target bay for the twenty-beam SHIVA solid-state laser facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was used for nuclear fusion research in the late seventies and early eighties, and was capable of delivering up to 28 trillion watts of power on target.
- While computer animation was used in several scenes, the technology did not exist for a shot to contain both live actors and computer animation. Live-action shots were combined with hand-drawn animation. Strong editing, such as with the light cycle chase, created an apparently seamless blend of actors and computer animation.
- Although horizontally running 35mm film was used for multiple visual effects shots, a majority of scenes requiring rotoscope effects were shot on medium format sheet film, adding great cost to the production.
- In this film produced by the Walt Disney Company, a man named Walter started a company in his garage which became a huge company. In real life Walt Disney started the Walt Disney Company itself in his garage, and that went on to become a huge company.
- Jeff Bridges produced too much of a bulge in the crotch area in his computer outfit, so he was forced to wear a dance belt to conceal it.
- The British rock group Supertramp was to contribute to the movie's soundtrack but was unable to due to previous obligations.
- The computer character that helps Tron connect to his user is named 'DuMont'; this is a reference to Allen B. DuMont, inventor of the first monitor in the year 1920.
- Due to the poor return at the box office, following this film and its predecessor The Black Hole (1979), Disney Studios did not make another live subject film for ten years.
- To inspire the actors, arcade games were placed on the production sets and could be played during downtime. Jeff Bridges apparently was the most adept at the games and found it hard to tear himself away from a game to shoot a scene.
>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<
Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.
- SPOILER: In the novelization, the final printout Flynn gets is very different from the one shown in the movie; it is more detailed and complicated, shown as a database-like list, and it shows evidence that Dillinger stole several game programs, not just Space Paranoids. The filmmakers may have originally had this list in the film and decided to simplify it so the audience would have no trouble knowing exactly what the printout says. The shots of the printout - and the readout on Dillingers desk computer - are inserts, and a wider shot of Dillinger sinking into his chair looking at the screen clearly shows a readout identical to the one in the novelization. (See also Goofs)
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