Actor Norman Reedus, who was then a model, makes a brief appearance in the music video as the young man playing with a trolley.
Guitarist Ed O'Brien described early attempts to record "Fake Plastic Trees" at London's RAK Studios as sounding "like Guns N' Roses' 'November Rain'.
The song placed at number 376 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The song charted on the UK Singles Chart, the New Zealand Singles Chart, the US Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the Canadian Rock/Alternative chart, but it did not make a substantial commercial impact elsewhere.
Radiohead singer Thom Yorke said "Fake Plastic Trees" was "the product of a joke that wasn't really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening and, well, a breakdown of sorts".