Stephen King's original novel also featured a return appearance by Ace Merrill, the bully played by Kiefer Sutherland in Stand by Me (1986).
The setting of Needful Things is a fictional town called Castle Rock, Maine - as in Stephen King's novel. The distribution company Castle Rock was named after it when it released Stand by Me (1986). Castle Rock was also the setting for The Dead Zone (1983), Cujo (1983), and The Dark Half (1993). It was also the setting for Stand by Me
Sheriff Alan Pangborn, played here by Ed Harris, also appears in The Dark Half (1993), released earlier the same year, in which the part is played by Michael Rooker.
At approximately 13:59 as Leland Gaunt pages through his book before entering the name of Brian Rusk, you can clearly see a page titled "Port Elizabeth" (South Africa), and the name of Nelson Mandela listed.
In the film, Hugh Priest buys a football jacket from Gaunt while, in the novel, he buys a fox's tail just like the one he used to fix to the car's aerial. If you look closely, the tail is visible during the flashback scene, just when Hugh tries the jacket in the store.