Forrest Gump/Trivia

• Actor Allusion: Tom Hanks survived Vietnam. He's not as lucky when he is sent to rescue a paratrooper who is the last of four brothers.
• Defictionalization: Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.
  • In a sense. The movie's Bubba Gump was a shrimp extraction concern, the defictionalized Bubba Gump is a chain of casual dining restaurants.
• Development Hell: The adaptation of the book sequel, Gump Co. (helped by the fact that due to Hollywood Accounting, author Winston Groom didn't get a dime out of the $676 million the film took worldwide).
• Hey, It's That Guy!: A very young Haley Joel Osment plays little Forrest Gump Jr..
  • Gary Sinise of CSI: NY, plays Lieutenant Dan.
  • The principal whom Forrest's mother sleeps with to get Forrest into school is Bernard from Lost.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Joe Alaskey (best known for, among other roles, serving as the current voice for a number of Looney Tunes characters) provides the voice of unseen Richard Nixon.
  • Kurt Russell does a quick cameo voicing Elvis Presley. It wasn't the first time (It Happened at the World's Fair), the second (the TV biopic Elvis directed by John Carpenter) nor the last time he played the King.
• I Am Not Spock: Gary Sinise became so strongly identified as Lieutenant Dan that he decided to just start a band called the Lieutenant Dan Band, with the proceeds from the band's performances going to charity. He also stars in a series of ads as Lieutenant Dan supporting suicide hotlines for veterans.
• Throw It In: Tom Hanks based Forrest's accent on the child actor who played young Forrest (not Forrest Jr.).
  • When Bubba tells him "My given name is Benjamin Buford Blue, but people call me 'Bubba'", of course Tom Hanks would respond with "My name is Forrest Gump. People call me 'Forrest Gump'". This wasn't in the script.
• What Could Have Been: John Travolta was offered the role of Forrest, but turned it down. He regretted doing so, but he did pretty well anyway. Bill Murray was also considered as Forrest. And Dave Chapelle (who would work with Hanks in You've Got Mail)was offered the role of Bubba, but turned it down, believing the movie would bomb. He, too, has regretted passing on his offer.
  • And given what happened to Mykelti Willaimson, the actor who played Bubba, he may have done alright in the end. To wit, Mr Williamson was quoted in interviews a few years later, saying that after "Gump", he was primarily offered roles as a comedic black character in films, only to be rejected because his lips weren't big enough - they hadn't realized that the character of Bubba's lips were prosthetic. Which is yet another of this film's high quotient of Unfortunate Implications.
  • 2Pac auditioned for the role of Bubba.