Trivia: In the scene of Missy's funeral, Stephen King plays the priest.
Trivia: The town in Iowa that the movie was filmed in was Dyersville. The actual house and farm used in the movie are about 2 miles outside of town and are open to the public.
Trivia: Judith Barsi was killed by her father a year and half before the film's release. The song "Love Survives" was put in the soundtrack as a dedication to her memory.
Trivia: When David Banner is dreaming about his trial, the jury foreperson is played by The Incredible Hulk creator, Stan Lee.
Trivia: This is a true story. After the death of his sister, Robert Harling locked himself in a room and 10 days later came out with this play which 3 years later became a movie. The movie was even filmed in the town that where everything happened and the nurse and doctors who cared for his sister Susan played themselves in the movie.
Trivia: The scene where Macaulay Culkin was waiting at the door for the babysitter and imagined the three burglars was the scene that inspired the box-office hit, Home Alone. (01:16:10)
Trivia: Matthew Broderick is believed to be related to Robert Shaw, the character he played in the film.
Trivia: In the famous faked orgasm scene, the woman who says, "I'll have what she's having. . ." is Rob Reiner's mother.
Trivia: The dead sailor harbouring a live crab, spooking Jammer out of his wits in the sunk submarine, is director James Cameron's younger brother Mike. The scene had to be shot several times to get it right, forcing Mike to hold the live crabs in his mouth, until the cry for "action", before releasing them. At one point he had to crush one with his teeth, as it gave him quite a bit of grief. Brotherly love immortalized.
Trivia: Lawrence Kasdan was originally set to direct, but dropped out.
Trivia: Much like the set of War of the Worlds, the set of this crash was so realistic, that airline pilots near Toronto were calling in a downed aircraft as they flew near it, unaware that it was staged for the filming of this movie.
Trivia: Director Oliver Stone can be seen briefly as a TV reporter.
Trivia: Sean Connery was considered for the part of Hap, which eventually went to Audrey Hepburn.
Trivia: At 80 years old in 1990, Jessica Tandy became the oldest actress to win an Oscar for "Best Actress" and the oldest person to win an Oscar in an acting role.
Trivia: On the promotional movie poster, a frazzled Steve Martin is shown holding 2 children upside down by their ankles. On the set, sometimes the children would get unruly, so as a joke, Steve Martin once grabbed 2 of the unruly children and actually held them upside down by their ankles. Director Ron Howard saw this and decided it would make a funny promotional picture, so that's where he got the idea for it.
Trivia: When Jerry returns home after his fight with Myra over her virginity, the theme song of "Gone with the Wind" starts playing. Jerry then scoops Myra up in his arms and carries her off to bed, just as Rhett Butler did to Scarlett.
Trivia: Although in real life Principal Joe Clark improved the discipline problems at Eastside High School, he did not, contrary to what the film has you believe, improve the academics in any meaningful way. Although test scores improved very slightly his first couple of years as principal (partly due to the fact that he expelled so many bad students) from 1986 to 1988, during his time as principal, Eastside High School had the lowest state exam passage rates in all of New Jersey. One of these years in particular, under Clark's tenure, Eastside High's passage rate was as low as 24.1%.
Trivia: During the fight scene between Jimmy and Dalton, Jimmy slams a log against Dalton's chest. The log you see here is a real one. Marshall Teague thought the log was a breakable prop and kept slamming it into Patrick Swayze's chest with each take. By the end, Swayze's chest was covered in bruises.
