The 14-minute-long Thriller video was so popular when it first aired that MTV ran it twice an hour to meet demand.

Lycaon served human flesh to Zeus, wanting to know if he was really a god and therefore all-knowing. Lycaon's transformation was punishment for his crime.

A minor character in the first novel, Jacob is introduced as a member of the Quileute tribe. He resurfaces in New Moon when Bella learns that he and other tribe members can shape-shift into wolves.

In The Howling, Karen resolves to warn the world about the existence of werewolves, and surprises her employers by launching into her warning during a live television news broadcast. Then, to prove her story, she herself transforms into a werewolf.

In his Histories, Herodotus wrote that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia, were all transformed into wolves once every year for several days, and then changed back to their human shape.

In his Otia Imperialia, Gervase of Tilbury tells of many strange creatures, including werewolves. He declares, "One thing I know ... the course of human destiny is such that certain men change into wolves according to the cycles of the moon." Knowing this claim may meet with some skepticism, he backs it up with a very specific story of a knight named Raimbaud de Pouget who became a werewolf.

Living in a small town in Nebraska, Scott Howard's only claim to popularity is playing on his school's basketball team (which hasn't won a game in three years). After he transforms into the wolf, however, he takes them to the state championship.

Fennoscandian werewolves were usually old women who possessed poison-coated claws and had the ability to paralyze cattle and children with their gaze.

The single was a top 40 U.S. hit, the only one of Zevon's career.

In Hungarian folklore, werewolves were said to live in the region of Transdanubia, and it was thought that the ability to change into a wolf was obtained in the infant age, after the suffering of abuse by the parents or by a curse.