During the scene in which Chris is chopping his thumb with the meat cleaver, the cleaver was a real one. Christian Bachini got so carried away by the scene that he ended up hitting his real hand with the blade instead of the prosthetic attachment. The wound had to be covered in make up in order to complete the shoot.
Before coming up with the story for "Escalation", Christian Bachini, wanted to debut as Director with a full feature film. Given the lack of budget, Christian created a story that would only require shooting in a single location and himself as an actor while having an invisible villain, a "Voice" as the main enemy. He ended up with a two hours feature film script that still required a larger budget compared to what he had so "Escalation" became a simplified short film based on one of the first scenes that take place in the feature film script adapted to be its standalone "proof of concept" story.
In the scene where Chris rolls over the kitchen cart, one of the props inside the cart was made of real glass. After rolling over the cart, the glass prop fell on the floor breaking right under Christian Bachini causing his right hand to land on a sea of glass splinters. The injury required the hand to be stitched but Christian refused and wrapped up the hand in duct tape after sealing the wound with super glue. He spent the following days shooting scenes where his hand was not in sight.
In the mirror reflection scene, only present in the Director's Cut of Escalation, the blood in Chris' eye was real. Christian Bachini injured his eye on set and upon seeing the blood, with the suggestion of co-producer Lucy Chun Yan, decided to create a brand new scene in order to incorporate the disgusting sight of his bloody eyeball.