True to form, 'Mad Magazine' ran a mini-parody of this their own film. It was called: "Mad Magazine Resents 'Throw Up the Academy'".
The film was originally conceived as "Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy", this was an attempt cash in on the magazine's reputation following National Lampoon Magazine's success with National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). The editorial staff at 'Mad Magazine' disowned the movie in print, and gave it a two page treatment, explicitly pointing out that Ron Leibman had the good sense to have his name removed from the credits. Ultimately, this would be 'Mad' magazine's last attempt at producing live-action entertainment until Mad TV (1995).
'Mad' magazine publisher William M. Gaines (aka Bill Gaines), in an interview with 'The Comics Journal' (Issue No. #81) published in May 1983, spoke of the publication's involvement with this picture: ''What happened is that we had a contract with Warner Brothers to put out a 'Mad' movie. It's like four years old now. They came up with a script that we didn't like, and then they came up with a script using our scriptwriters that they didn't like, but meanwhile they threw this script onto our desk . . . Although there were many things in it that I thought were offensive and should be removed, generally I liked the script. And I thought, 'Well, in addition to a Mad movie, there's nothing wrong with having something like Lampoon did with 'Animal House' [See: National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)]. 'Animal House' was 'Lampoon Presents' and really had nothing to do with the magazine, it was just using their name, and it was a good movie, and it was very successful, and it made 'Lampoon' a lot of money. I guess. So we were going to do the same thing: 'Mad Magazine Completely Disassociates Itself from Up the Academy'. But that was too long for them, they can't think in that many words. They put the damn thing out without all the deletions they had promised to make, which means they're liars. I'm talking about one of my sister companies [laughter] . . . And there we were connected with it, and there wasn't much we could do about it. I paid Warner Brothers [US] 30 grand to take Mad's name off for television. So for [US] $30,000 we got out of being associated with it on Home Box Office. It won't say 'Mad Magazine Presents' and Alfred E. Neuman won't be in it. And it was well worth [US] $30,000. [laughter]''.
Robert Downey Jr.: Uncredited, as a boy on a soccer team. He is the son of the movie's director Robert Downey Sr..