Most viewers believe right up until the end of the movie that it is Tom Hanks character, Captain Miller, who is the old veteran in the beginning of the film crying in the French cemetary. This is because the camera shot fades from his eyes to Captain Miller's eyes in the scene just before the Normandy invasion. If you look very closely though you will see a very small "Screaming Eagle" pin on the old mans jacket indicating he is a paratrooper from the 101st Airborne Division. Captain Miller was a ranger.

The majority of the extras in the movie were from the Irish Army and the F.C.A. (a military organisation). Direct from one of these extras: in the opening scenes where the soldiers are in the boats before docking France against German militia, the soldiers puke their guts out, and we all see this. What you don't know is that it was REAL vomit you see - it was caught on camera perfectly and it was kept...

Some of the extras in the film were real amputees with one arm or leg missing so the effect of seeing someone blown up and lose their limb was as realistic as possible, as opposed to having a leg or arm "tucked away." There was uproar in Ireland because of this, but the extras loved meeting the actors and getting paid handsomely as well.

Director Steven Spielberg reduced the color saturation of the film by approximately 60% to more closely match his artistic vision. This led to a flood of complaints by customers when the movie was broadcast on TV and cable, so the cable and TV companies had to turn the colour gain back up again.

The storyline for the movie was very loosely based on the story of Sgt. Frederick (Fritz) Niland from Tonawanda, New York. He and other members of the 101st, were dropped too far inland, but eventually made their way back to their unit. Upon his arrival back, the Chaplain told Niland about the death of his three brothers, two at Normandy and one in the Far East, so the Chaplain arranged his return home, due to the US War Department's Sole Survivor Policy. As it turned out, his brother believed to have been killed in the Far East had been captured, and later returned home as well. The story of Niland and the 101st was written about by the Chaplain, Lt. Col. Father Francis Sampson, in his book, Look Out Below!

The "streaks" that appear in the film when fires or explosions are shown are deliberate. This is a phenomenon that would often appear in actual WWII combat photography and was intentionally emulated when the film was made.

During the scene in which Pvt. Stanley Mellish is being stabbed slowly by the German soldier, the soldier is whispering something to him in German - "Give up. You have got no chance. This way is much more easy for you. Much easier."

The resentment the soldiers feel towards Pvt. Ryan is real: Matt Damon was the only cast member who didn't go through boot camp.

The movie was shot in chronological order, which is unusual for a film. Spielberg chose to shoot it that way so that the actors would feel like they were going through the experience in the same order as the characters they play, and they lose friends on the way. This helped create the resentment towards Ryan, who doesn't share the journey with them.

The story James Ryan tells Miller, about his brothers in the barn with Alice Jardin, was not in the script. Matt Damon ad-libbed it and Spielberg decided to leave it in the final film.

The opening sequences of the Normandy invasion on D-Day were actually shot in Ireland, not in France. The French government would not give permission to the producers to shoot on Normandy beaches.

As a German it's a bit funny to me to see this movie (like many other WW2 movies)... the Americans are translated, so they speak German... and the Germans also speak German, but they don't understand each other. So I prefer it in the original language, so everybody speaks his own language.