The diner from "Maximum Overdrive" was indeed a real truck stop in Columbus County, NC a few miles west of Wilmington on US 74/76. The truck stop was torn down in the late 80s.

In the game room of DIXIE BOY truck stop, they had a Bally Night Rider pinball game, and a Williams Pokerino (also had a few video games: A Cinematronics Star Castle, Atari Tempest Cocktail and a Konami Time Pilot '84 in a Stern cabinet). Fairly early on in the movie, the Night Rider playfield glass smashes itself, and very late in the movie, for a split second, you can see the games being plowed into by a semi truck.

Stephen King was forced to make some changes to the film in order to avoid an X rating for violence. While the scenes excised may have been deemed excessive at the time, we've all seen as bad or worse since. That said, the scenes cut have not been reinstated and we have the original theatrical cut here. The scenes are reported to total about 13 seconds and include an extended look at the steamroller running over the kid in the baseball field, the bible salesman losing his face and it falling into his lap and more of the truck stop shoot-out scene.

In an ironic twist of fate, an accident occurred on July 31, 1985 during shooting in a suburb of Wilmington, North Carolina where a radio-controlled lawnmower used in a scene went out of control and struck a block of wood used as a camera support, shooting out wood splinters which injured the director of photography Armando Nannuzzi in which he lost an eye. Nannuzzi sued Stephen King on February 18, 1987 for $18 million in damages. Later settled out of court.

Interstate 40: Maximum Overdrive (on the section from I-95 to Wilmington, NC), TNN (shield sometimes shown on commercials).

Stephen King: man who the ATM swears at.

When all the chaos has started, there is a scene of some people on a boat. These are actually members of AC/DC.

Maximum Overdrive

Based on:

"Trucks" (June, 1973) by Stephen King
Published in Cavalier magazine
Collected in Night Shift (1978) by Stephen King
Collected in Stephen King (1981) by Stephen King
Collected in Mysterious Motoring Stories (1987) edited by William Pattrick
Collected in Death on Wheels (1999) edited by Peter Haining