Trivia / Rat Race

• All-Star Cast: Among the actors included in the movie are Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Seth Green, Cuba Gooding Jr., Amy Smart, Wayne Knight, John Cleese, and Kathy Bates (in an Uncredited Role).
• Awesome, Dear Boy: John Cleese declared that Rat Race was only the second script in his career that made him want to be part of the project just by reading it.
• Billing Displacement: Vince Vieluf does not appear on the poster, and neither does Lanai Chapman. Both are arguably more important and have more screentime than Tracy - who is on there. In the case of Vieluf, his agent tried to pressure the studio to give him top billing, not only did they refuse but they removed him from any promotional material. Vieluf fired that agent soon after he found out.
• California Doubling: The various highways the characters end up in along the journey to Silver City, New Mexico were filmed in Calgary. The desert was doubled by Drumheller, also in Canada. Silver City itself was doubled by Ely, Nevada.
• Deleted Role: Diamond Dallas Page filmed a scene where Owen accidentally stumbles into his house (which is on the road by the way) and is caught in a compromising position with his wife. It was cut from the film after test audiences failed to react to his appearance.
• Deleted Scene:
  • One of the High Rollers in Donald's group pulls a What the Hell, Hero? on everyone for exploiting the protagonists — and gets a huge laugh from everyone else.
  • A scene where the High Rollers play Monopoly with real money.
  • While the Lucys are chasing Owen, they run into a bus full of Rickys.
  • A scene where the cow is thought to be talking (when it's actually Vicky trapped under the cow).
  • One such scene shows what happened to the crooked key maker after he floated away with a cow and a hot air balloon.
  • Another scene explains how Owen ended up so close to Silver City. After outrunning the stranded and pissed Lucy conventioneers, who get distracted by a busload of Ricky Ricardo lookalikes, he climbs on board a house that is being moved by truck. Said house is owned by Diamond Dallas Page, who beats up Owen and throws him out of the moving house, close to his destination.
• Fake Nationality: Rowan Atkinson is British and plays the Italian Enrico Pollini. Averted in the Italian dub, where he's portrayed as British.
• Playing with Character Type: Tracy is introduced as one of Amy Smart's typical witty Girl Next Door roles in the late 90s and early 2000s. Then she discovers her boyfriend cheating and becomes very Cute and Psycho.
• Real-Life Relative: Jerry Zucker's mother plays the elderly Lucy impersonator.
• Throw It In!: The Nevada Northern Railway Museum, which stood in for the Silver City train station, was made to feature more prominently because they loved the look of it. The planned two day shoot was extended to six days.
• Those Two Actors: Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart played each other's love interest just the year prior in Road Trip which also involved the two characters hitting the road in a race against time.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Kathy Bates goes uncredited for her cameo as the Squirrel Lady.
  • The actress that plays Charlene, Shawn's ex-girlfriend (whom Tracy catches with him in his pool) is not listed anywhere in the cast credits. IMDb claims it's Julie Michaels from Road House (1989).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Enrico was originally written to be a Chinese diplomat.
  • Jason Alexander was set to play Zack before his Seinfeld co-star Wayne Knight got the role.
  • The Cody brothers were envisioned as Expies of Jay and Silent Bob, even offered to Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes. They turned it down to make Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
  • Jim Carrey was considered for a role.
  • An early idea was for the characters to travel to Las Vegas, New Mexico. But they worried it would be too confusing for audiences.
  • The script called for just one tour guide in the Barbie museum. But Jerry Zucker liked the pair who made it into the film, so he had them both give the tour.
  • Jerry Goldsmith had originally been selected to score the movie, but had to drop out at the last minute due to health reasons. Elmer Bernstein (who coincidentally composed the score for the unrelated 1960 movie The Rat Race) composed a rejected score (which was ultimately finally released by La La Land Records in 2023).

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