The screenplay was written by D. Duckie Rodriguez and Shiva Rodriguez while on vacation for their 15th wedding anniversary. It was inspired by the horror film marathons played on television during the month of October.
The title character of "The Figure" was originally just a place holder for a name. It was decided that because the story was based on the garden variety formula for a slasher film, the masked killer should be known by something as generic as possible so the name stayed. The fictional town's name is "Red Lake" for the same reason.
All of the campers were named after the survivors of popular horror films. The other character names pay tribute to the villains in the horror genre.
Sam's death was decided on when the writers came up with the most unusual weapon they could think of and then did a search to see if it had been used before in a horror movie.
The writers and special effects team wanted to come up with a murder weapon that they've never seen before in a movie, so they decided to give the music-loving character a set of Pan Pipes.