Trivia: Kevin Peter Hall, who plays the Predator, also appears as the pilot of the general's helicopter at the end of the film.
Trivia: Jesse Ventura was delighted to find out from the wardrobe department that his arms were 1" bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger's. He suggested to Schwarzenegger that they measure arms, with the winner getting a bottle of champagne. Ventura lost because Schwarzenegger had told the wardrobe department to tell Ventura that his arms were bigger.
Trivia: Jesse Ventura could only carry enough blank ammunition to fire "Old Painless" for five seconds even though the props department had dramatically reduced the cyclic rate of the weapon to allow the camera to film the barrels rotating.
Trivia: Another reason that the movie almost didn't make its deadline was because the actors kept getting sick. The film was filmed mostly in the Mexican jungle, and aside from dangerous, venomous insects, the actors were often afflicted with high fever, severe stomach ailments, and flu-like illnesses during most of the filming, causing a few of the actors to require several days of bed rest.
Trivia: Kevin Peter Hall had to wear a custom made "cool suit" which circulated cold water to keep him cool while wearing the Predator suit in the Jungle. Even with the cool suit he could only wear the Predator suit for about 2 hours before overheating and having to be quickly but carefully extricated from the suit.
Trivia: When we see the predator polishing and sorting out his skull collection (before the final fight with Arnie), we see some skulls he had already cleaned, and one of them has a hole in the head (where he shot the person we see earlier). Nothing major, but it shows some nice thinking because we only see the skull for a split second.
Trivia: Almost all the thermal vision shots were done by artificially colouring negatives shot with a regular camera as the expensive and extremely cumbersome thermal imaging camera couldn't see the difference between the temperature of the actor's bodies and the ambient temperature of the tropical jungle the film was shot in. The few shots which actually use the thermal imaging camera were done by spraying ice water all over the surrounding area and making the actors stand by a fire before filming.
Trivia: Carl Weathers did not exercise with the rest of the cast while preparing for the role in the jungle. He told everyone that his awesome body was just natural, while he actually exercised while no-one was looking.
Trivia: The Predator suit weighed over 200lbs and even though Kevin Peter Hall was a large and powerful man he had to be connected to a "bungie" rig to enable him to move believably.
Trivia: Anyone know who was cut from the film as the first Predator? Jean-Claude Van Damme, in a special effects suit. He quit very early on, as he didn't like being uncredited, so the design was scrapped and remade as what we know and love today.
Trivia: "Old Painless" required a rather large and heavy battery pack to operate, when you see Jesse Ventura walking with the weapon it is not plugged in and consequently wouldn't operate.
Trivia: Only two people were injured during the filming of Predator in spite of all the explosions and gunfire, the first was director John McTiernan who broke his wrist falling from a tree but ignored the injury out of embarassment, the second was the stuntman who did the high dive off the waterfall who threw his knee out when he hit the water.
Trivia: Surprisingly, despite the excellent effects and make-up in the film, the budget approval for Predator was so low that within the very last weeks of filming, the movie was almost dropped. Arnold Schwarzenegger also had an obligation he had to keep during the last week of filming, causing him to miss 3 days.
Trivia: When Dutch impales one of the villains against a wooden post with his machete, he quips, "Stick around." Arnold Schwarzenegger ad-libbed this line.
Trivia: To create the effect of the Predator's cloaking device, whenever a shot called for the Predator to be invisible, it was actually two shots combined. One was a man in a special effects suit who did the movements of the Predator, and the second had no-one in it, but was filmed with a larger camera. When combined, and the bigger camera shot put in place of the effects suit, it created a "distorted" effect wherever the Predator was.
Trivia: Fox's insurance company wouldn't allow Sonny Landham to be in the film unless he was accompanied at all times by a bodyguard, not to protect him but to protect the other members of the cast and crew from him.
Trivia: Three of the film's actors would later be involved in gubernatorial politics. Jesse Ventura was Governor of Minnesota from 1999-2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor of California from 2003-11, and Sonny Landham unsuccessfully campaigned to be the Governor of Kentucky in 2003.
Trivia: The Predator's blood in this movie was actually made on-set, consisting of a mixture of the liquid found inside glow sticks and K-Y Jelly.
Chosen answer: Yes. The predator can be seen not in the immediate shot after, but the one a few seconds later as they are seen walking away.
XIII
Before or after Ramirez gets hit in the face with the branch?
About 3 seconds before. If you look VERY closely (probably needing to pause the screen around 00:40:55 - about a minute after Billy said, "There's something in the trees"), there appears to be a transparent image of The Predator in the background above the major's (Arnold's) right shoulder. If this is meant to be The Predator, its body is curved around a tree trunk and its arms are extended toward the right of the screen (near Arnold's right ear), camouflaged as green leaves.
KeyZOid
The Predator - in a recognizable form - really wasn't visible until another minute later @ 00:41:55 when it was on the ground approaching Hawkins and the woman.
KeyZOid