• Hughes says this film was inspired by his own childhood family vacations.
• John Candy (Chet) and Dan Aykroyd (Roman) were already well-acquainted from their work together in the early 1970s in the first Canadian Second City cast in Toronto, Canada.
• The Great Outdoors was filmed in six weeks at The Pines Resort in Bass Lake, California. The cast and crew numbered 150. Visit their website to see photos of the area as well as the other many movies that were filmed there.
• During the ending credits there is a subtitled conversation between two racoons.

Uncle Buck

• Anna Chlumsky makes a brief appearance as a schoolgirl. She would later star with Macaulay Culkin in My Girl.
• The movie trailer contains several scenes that don't appear in the final version of the film, including one of Buck shaving and another where Buck talks to Mrs. Russell about how he will handle the kids while she and her husband are gone.
• One night during filming John Candy went to a bar with Tarquin Gotch and spent most of the night there meeting people. The next day John Hughes heard a caller on a radio talk show describe his evening with Candy. Hughes was upset with Candy and, despite Candy's assertion that Buck was supposed to appear disheveled, Hughes cancelled his scenes for the day and told him to get himself together and get some sleep.
• During Miles' (Macaulay Culkin) interrogation of his uncle Buck, John Candy wrote out the script's dialogue and wore it atop his head so Macaulay could read the lines more quickly and keep the pace of the scene very fast.
• Scenes from Maisy's classroom are edited from television versions.
• Uncle Buck began filming on January 4, 1989, was released to theaters on August 16, and found its way to video by December - all in less than one year!
• Gaby Hoffman played Amy Madigan's daughter again in Field of Dreams.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

"Yule crack up!"
• Christmas Vacation is based on the short story "Christmas '59" by John Hughes - the second Vacation story to be published in National Lampoon's Magazine (the first was "Vacation '58", which was the basis for the first Vacation movie). The Christmas story was printed in December of 1980.
• The film's score was by Angelo Badalamenti, who typically scores very dark music for films. Director Jeremiah Chechink hired him thinking it would be a welcome change.
• The very first shot in the film (the Griswold's car driving down a road) was the very first shot ever filmed by Jeremiah Chechik for film. Previously he had done television commercials.
• The family car flying through the air was filmed for real, just as in the first movie. (Today it's more likely to be done digitally.) And also like the first movie, after the crash Audrey and Rusty are crammed into the front seat with their parents.
• The exterior shots of the Griswold home were constructed and filmed entirely on a studio lot in southern California (an earthquake even once hit during filming), where fake snow was produced. Other outdoor scenes were filmed throughout Breckenridge, Colorado. Some of the indoor set of the Griswold home was constructed and filmed in an old high school gymnasium (much like the library in The Breakfast Club), also in Breckenridge. Filming lasted throughout the year; indoor scenes were often filmed in the summer.
• Because the altitude was so great in Colorado, cast and crew sometimes required oxygen tanks.
• The Griswold's neighbor's house is the same house Murtaugh and his family lived in all the Lethal Weapon movies. The houses on this street were built on a lot at Warner Brothers Studios. The snow was fake, and often it was very warm and crew dressed in shorts, even though the cast had to wear heavy winter clothes. Occasionally trees with green leaves on them are visible by accident in the outdoor scenes. (Visit this page at the Internet Movie Database to read a long list of continuity and filming errors.)
• Johnny Galecki (Rusty) says that often when he filmed his shots, Chevy Chase gave him signals off camera for when to say each line. Galecki says that it taught him a lot about comic timing. (He later went on to do a recurring role as David on the TV comedy "Roseanne.")
• For some reason Rusty is younger than Audrey. In the other Vacation movies, he is always older.
• The director, Jeremiah Chechik, is on the cover of the People magazine Clark is reading in bed.
• The assistant director for Christmas Vacation is Frank Capra III, the grandson of the famous "It's A Wonderful Life" director.
• Aunt Bethany was played by Mae Questel, who years ago supplied the original voices for Betty Boop and Popeye's gal pal Olive Oyl. Christmas Vacation was the last movie she made before passing away in 1998 of Alzheimer's Disease.
• When the two grandfathers were sleeping in chairs while the parade was on the TV, they were actually sleeping. Uncle Lewis nodding off later in the film was real as well.
• After Clark's unsuccessful first attempt displaying the house Christmas lights, he asks Rusty to help him check all the light bulbs again. Rusty looks at his bare wrist, pretending to have a watch, and excuses himself. Looking at a bare wrist and pretending to have a watch is one of Chevy Chase's trademark gags.
• The house front shown in the home movie Clark watches in the attic is the same house front from "Bewitched" and "The New Gidget."
• A scene with Ellen and Catherine in Cousin Eddie's house trailer was cut.
• Clark and Eddie drink from Marty Moose mugs (MM was the mascot for Wallyworld in the first Vacation film).
• Cousin Eddie once wears a black dickie visible under a white sweater; the joke was Randy Quaid's wife's idea.
• Clark using the chainsaw to saws off the newel post is a reference to the newel post that was loose in the 1946 classic Christmas film, It's a Wonderful Life. Rusty is watching this movie when his grandparents arrive at the house.
• After getting gyped out of a Christmas bonus, Clark launches into a high-speed rant about his boss, calling him a series of colorful insults. Cue cards were hung up on the walls behind the camera so Chevy Chase could remember all the words.
• Gene Autrey's "Here Comes Santa Claus" plays toward the end of the movie. Gene Autry was Randy Quaid's grandfather's cousin.
• This was the only Griswold Vacation movie that did not feature Linsey Buckingham's "Holiday Road." Instead its theme is "Christmas Vacation" by Mavis Staples. Visit The Soundtrack Collector for more details.
• At the time of its release, Christmas Vacation earned the biggest box office profits.
• NBC presently owns the television rights to Christmas Vacation. They garner huge ratings every time they show the film.