Rat Race

Trivia: In the very beginning of the movie, the two brothers are gambling together. They pull the lever on one of the slot machines and two cows come up. Significant because they have an encounter with cows later in the movie.

Trivia: At the beginning the two brothers are in the casino taking quarters out of a feed the children donation box. It's ironic that they should get the gold coin with the quarters and race to Silver City and end up giving the money to the Feed the Children Foundation and the end.

Trivia: This is the first movie to have 2 Academy award-winning Afro-Americans together.

Trivia: If you look closely during the Lucy impersonator scenes, you'll see the same woman who got her lipstick all over her face in the movie 'Airplane', also directed by Jerry Zucker, as one of the older Lucys. This woman is Zucker's mother, and Zucker has made a point to include her in small role in his movies.

Trivia: During the monster truck scene, it briefly shows a shot of the crowd standing up and cheering. The man with the white shirt in the front row is Josh Breckman, the writer's son.

Trivia: Donald Sinclair was an actual hotel manager in the British town of Torquay, where John Cleese's TV series "Fawlty Towers" was set. Cleese turned Basil Fawlty into a composite of Sinclair.

Trivia: Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character is based upon a real-life referee, who miscalled a coin toss at the beginning of a football game.

Trivia: When all the contestants are running towards the train station in Silver City, in the shot that shows all the contestants running past the camera, you see Seth Green jump over something as he gets near the camera. If you watch the 'Behind the Scenes' footage on the DVD, you see it is the end of the camera track that he jumps over.

Trivia: As in "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963), the cast is in a race to be the first to reach a hidden container of cash. The similarities are: 1) The cast is a Who's Who list of well known people. 2) The amount of cash is very similar. When adjusted for inflation, the 1963 amount of $350,000 would equate out to the 2001 amount of $2,003,289.47. This movie's prize was $2,000,000.

Movie Nut

Rat Race mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Tracy visits her boyfriend in the helicopter, she starts to throw random objects at his truck. Watch her first throw where she cracks the back window, you'll notice that the front bonnet is dented although nothing has hit the bonnet yet. If you believe something might have been thrown before that, when she throws the second and third object there is no dent where that one was. (00:46:25)

More mistakes in Rat Race

Enrico Pollini: Am I too late-a? Look I won a coin, a gold coin-a, isn't it wonderful? Look at this room, what a beautiful room, have you seen this room?
Randy Pear: Yes! We're IN it.

More quotes from Rat Race

Question: Besides being played for comedic effect, would getting the coin toss wrong have really mattered?

Answer: It really would have mattered. This was over time and the winner of the coin toss gets the ball first. In 2001, NFL overtime was sudden death where a field goal wins the game. So having the ball first is a huge advantage. The messed up coin toss seems to be a joke about the 1998 Thanksgiving game between the Lions and Steelers where the ref messed up the coin toss in overtime because he heard the Steeler's player's call wrong. The Lions ended up getting the ball and winning. Not to mention that many people who bet on football games also bet on the coin toss.

Bishop73

More questions & answers from Rat Race

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.