Trivia: Clark Griswold in the attic watching old movies dressed in a woman's turban and gloves to keep warm is not only funny but a reference to the Norma Desmond character from "Sunset Boulevard", who watches her old films to remember her Hollywood glory days.
Trivia: When the Grinch takes the table cloth from the table, everything on the table was supposed to fall off. When Jim Carrey yanked out the cloth however, everything stayed in place. Jim immediately walked back to the table and improvised knocking everything off and then knocking the table over.
Trivia: The "Sisters" comedy act was completely improvised by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
Trivia: When Kevin is in Buzz's bedroom, he finds in the box a picture of Buzz's girlfriend. This is actually a picture of the art director's son dressed up to look like a girl, because the director, Chris Columbus, thought it would be too harsh to make fun of a girl like that.
Trivia: When Edward is driven into town, the car passes a house with children playing on a slip 'n' slide on the front lawn. The boy running and sliding is future Backstreet Boy Nick Carter.
Trivia: Eddie Murphy's entire scene in the jail cell with his "Karate" impersonation was ad-libbed, there was no script direction at all. (00:23:30)
Trivia: Executive Producer Peter Billingsly has a cameo as the ticket agent at the airport. Peter also played Ralphie Parker in the 1983 movie favorite A Christmas Story.
Trivia: At one point during the song "Jack's Lament", Jack pops up between two tombstones. The tombstone on the left is a figure from the painting "The Scream", and the tombstone on the right is the horse from Picasso's "Guernica".
Trivia: When Kevin arrives at New York Airport, the woman at the counter who tells him which city he's in is Ally Sheedy. This film was written and produced by John Hughes, who also directed her in the 1985 film "The Breakfast Club."
Trivia: During filming, Alan Rickman was found proficient at mimicking American accents; the scene in which McClane and Hans Gruber meet was then inserted.
Trivia: Originally, the store Buddy and Jovie work in was supposed to be a Macy's. However, Macy's quickly dropped out of the project when they got the script and saw that there was a scene where Buddy confronts a fake mall-Santa in the store for not being the real Santa. Reportedly, Macy's representatives indignantly told the studio that "Macy's Santa is the REAL Santa!"
Trivia: When Frank throws water on a waiter he thought was on fire, he apologizes and claims he thought the waiter was Richard Pryor. This is a reference to the time Richard Pryor, while doing cocaine, set himself on fire and ran down a busy street in L.A.
Trivia: Melinda Dillon was given the wrong script on purpose when they filmed the Chinese restaurant scene. She had no idea that when they brought the duck out it would have its head still attached. All of her reactions, including when she first sees the duck and when the server cuts the head off, were completely genuine.
Trivia: During the scene where a drunken Uncle Billy walks home, a loud crashing sound is heard. The crashing sound was due to a crew member dropping a large tray of props. Thomas Mitchell quickly ad-libbed the line that he was all right. The crew member who dropped the tray was afraid he would be fired but instead director Frank Capra gave the crewman a ten dollar bonus for "improving the sound."
Trivia: Mel Gibson references the Three Stooges several times in the film. In real life, Gibson is a big Stooges fan, and in 2000, he produced the biographical TV movie "The Three Stooges."
Trivia: When the real Santa and the fake Santa are fighting on the sleigh when the fake Santa is heading out to deliver coal to all the children, the fake Santa says something like 'You are a strange little man.' Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) in the movie Toy Story said the same thing to Woody.