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.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: A very young Haley Joel Osment plays.
 * 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.
 * Throw It In: Tom Hanks based Forrest's accent on the child actor who played young Forrest (not ).
 * 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 realised 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.