PONCHO: Do you remember Afghanistan?
DUTCH: I'm trying to forget it.

The creature pursues Dutch into a river, and its cloaking device malfunctions. The creature, now visible, comes within a few feet of a mud-covered Dutch. His thermal signature reduced, Dutch remains unseen by the creature and it moves on. Dutch realizes he can use mud as camouflage.

Kevin Peter Hall, who plays the Predator, also has a brief cameo as a helicopter pilot at the end of the film.

Following the release of Rocky IV, a joke circulated in Hollywood that since Rocky Balboa had run out of earthly opponents, he would have to fight an alien if a fifth film were to be made. Inspired by the joke, screenwriters Jim and John Thomas wrote a screenplay for Predator.

The score was composed by Alan Silvestri, who was coming off the huge success of Back to the Future in 1985. Predator was his first major action movie and the score is full of his familiar genre characteristics: heavy horn blasts, staccato string rhythms, and undulating timpani rolls that highlight the action and suspense.