Eli Roth said the cat in the movie was such a good actor, and performed on cue, that he called him Leonardo DiCatprio. The name of the cat is Tonic and he previously starred in Pet Sematary (2019).
The bloody font used for the title card and the end credits is the same font used for the original Grindhouse trailer.
The third movie based on one of the five mock-trailers seen in Grindhouse (2007). Eli Roth directed the Thanksgiving trailer to be shown between the films Planet Terror (2007) and Death Proof (2007) when shown as a double feature. Machete (2010), Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) and this movie were later made into full-length feature films. As of 2023, only "Don't" and "Werewolf Women of the SS" have not yet been made.
According to filmmaker Eli Roth, the film that was advertised per fake trailer in Grindhouse (2007) was about "a kid who's in love with a turkey, and then his father killed it, and then he killed his family and went away to a mental institution and came back and took revenge on the town." In an interview with Total Film Magazine, Roth has said that the full-length film isn't meant to fit that description anymore: "We said, 'Let's pretend "Thanksgiving" was a movie from 1980 that was so offensive that every print was destroyed. All the scripts were burned. The director disappeared. The crew members changed their names. One person saved the trailer and uploaded it to the darkest corners of 4chan, and now it's made it out. So this is a 2023 reboot.' Once we said that, it freed us up."
Eli Roth was in the process of casting the movie when his friend Gina Gershon texted him and asked, "When are you putting me in a horror movie?" Roth responded, "Actually Gina, I have a part for you right now."