Curiosidades

Though the film was released in 1984, the idea for Sayonara Jupiter was conceived by Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka during the Japanese run of the original La guerra de las galaxias (1977) in the late 70's. He went to famous Japanese science fiction writer Sakyô Komatsu and asked him to create an story similar to Star Wars, but Komatsu chose to make a less action oriented story, more inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010: Odyssey 2 and an article concerning Jupiter turning into a star.

This was the last film to feature Akihiko Hirata. He died within months of this film's completion.

Shinji Higuchi told an anecdote about the time he worked on the film as a part of the effects staff during his teenage years. After the film premiered he took is girlfriend to see it and exaggerated his contribution by telling her he made the film. After it was over, she looked at him in a despicable way and said, "This is what you were doing? THIS is what you made?" After that date, his girlfriend dumped him with Higuchi joking that the incident motivated the rest of his career because deep down he felt that he needed to make a movie that would impress her.

Sakyô Komatsu wanted Orson Welles for the role of SSDO President.

On the Minerva-II space station, the character Captain Hoger Kinn watches an older Toho tokusatsu classic from 20 years earlier, Godzilla contra Ghidorah, el dragón de tres cabezas (1964), from a small video disc file, on a big screen. This film has two major connections to that film; Akihiko Hirata, one of the original cast members of that film (he played Chief Detective Okita), plays Professor Ryûtarô Inoue, who meets Kinn while watching the movie, and this film's director, Kôji Hashimoto, was an assistant director to Ishirô Honda on that film.