Trivia: The black jack dealer, played by Nick Mazzola, is a popular dealer. He was also the dealer in "MacShayne's", "Vegas Vacation", and "Casino".
Trivia: Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise spent a lot of time with a man and his autistic brother, whom the man took care of much like the way Charlie has to take care of Raymond. A lot of the things Cruise and Hoffman did in the movie were things they witnessed the two brothers doing. One example of this was when Raymond and Charlie lean their heads against each other's at the end. Had Cruise and Hoffman not seen the brothers do that, it never would have been in the movie.
Trivia: The scene where Raymond panics over the fire alarm was added during filming. Barry Levinson felt like too many good things were happening between Charlie and Raymond and the audience might get confused and begin to believe Raymond was no longer experiencing the same signs of autism he had been.
Trivia: When Charlie (Tom Cruise) decides to take Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) across the USA he wants to travel by plane. Raymond refuses, citing the fact that at least one plane from all the airlines on offer have, at some time, crashed. The only airline that Raymond would be willing to travel on is Qantas (the Australian airline) as this has a 100% crash-free record. Since Qantas offers no cross USA flights they have to travel by road. After the release of Rain Man many airlines included the film as part of their in-flight entertainment option, but nearly all of them deleted this scene, since it was hardly good publicity for their flights. The one exception was Qantas, who were proud to include the film in its entirety, thinking this particular scene gave Qantas excellent publicity.
Trivia: Although the movie was praised at the time for bringing autism to greater public awareness, more recently criticism has been made that the movie misleads people into thinking that savantism is common in austism, and for its conclusion that the character is better off in an institution than living with family. http://www.interactingwithautism.com/section/understanding/media/representations/details/38.
Trivia: The boy at the pancake counter is Dustin Hoffman's son, Jake Hoffman.
Trivia: When Raymond recites names from the phone book, two of the names are Marsha and William Gottsegen. These are Dustin Hoffman's real-life in-laws.
Answer: When they were children, Ray witnessed Charlie being burned by hot bath water. I think Ray says something about how he was left to look after Charlie while Charlie was in the bath, and Charlie got burned by the hot water. That memory must be very strong for Ray, and not comprehending the passing of time, Ray did not want to see Charlie hurt again.
Mark English