The lake behind the Gump house in Alabama is the same lake the Forrest rests his buddies at when he rescues them in Vietnam. Arguably a mistake, but it's not noticeably the same lake - just interesting to know.

The park bench that Tom Hanks sits on for much of the movie was located in Savannah, GA, at Chippewa Square. The fiberglass bench he sat on has since been removed and placed into a museum to avoid being destroyed by the weather. The church where the feather first falls is about 100 yards just down the street from his bench.

While Forrest is running across America the camera shows some wide shots of him running, That man in those shots is really Jim Hanks (Tom Hanks' brother in real life).

When Forrest tell lt. Dan he is going to be a shrimp boat captain, Lt. Dan says "yeah, and I'm an astronaut." The next movie Tom Hanks and Gary Sinese made together was Apollo 13 where they were both astronauts....

Forrest's son is played by Haley Joel Osment, the adorable kid that later achieved great fame as the troubled Cole in the "The Sixth Sense".

While Forrest is pushing Lt. Dan through the traffic in his wheelchair, the music is from "The Midnight Cowboy". A taxi stops short and Lt. Dan says "I'm walkin' heah, I'm walkin' heah." It was a famous line said by Dustin Hoffman from that movie.

12 minutes into the film, when young Forrest is on the School Bus, the little girl that shakes her head 'no' is Elisabeth Hanks, daughter of Tom Hanks.

Forrest has his eyes closed on every picture you see of him in the film.

In the beginning of the film when young Forrest is on the School Bus one of the boys that tells him he can't sit down is Director Robert Zemeckis son Alex.

In the original script, every member of Forrest's platoon in Vietnam was supposed to be mildly retarded like him. This was an experimental practice of the Army in the Vietnam War; the Army tried allowing soldiers with lower IQs to enlist, but put them all in platoons together. Because this led to so many discipline problems, the Army is not particularly proud of it and threatened not to work with the filmmakers at all if they left the platoon like that. As a result, only Forrest and Bubba are noticeably below average intelligence.

Before Tom Hanks was cast as Forrest, Bill Murray was interested in the part.

When Forrest is meeting President Kennedy, the music playing in the background is from the musical "Camelot." The history of this connection is as follows: In a 'Life' magazine interview (a week after the President's assassination) Jacqueline Kennedy (his widow) compared the Kennedy years (with children Caroline and John Jr.) in the White House to King Arthur's kingdom "Camelot", explaining how fond the President was of listening to the musical Camelot's title song.

The helicopters in the first Vietnam camp scene consist of one helicopter being superimposed many times over. All the helicopters are fake.

When Forrest is carrying Bubba as he runs from the napalm, Mykelti Williams was too heavy for Tom Hanks to carry, so he's on a wire rigged to a crane.

When Bubba tells Forrest that his name is Benjamin Buford Blue but people call him Bubba, Forrest was not supposed to respond. However Tom Hanks replied "My name is Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump", and Zemeckis decided to keep it in the film.

Tom Hanks' scene where he calls the hotel management from his room to report about the "power outage" across the street in the Watergate was actually filmed on scene within the Howard Johnson's hotel which contained the look out room for the burglars and was the place from which the police were called. The hotel is now a dorm for George Washington University.