Film
- The Cast Showoff: Maureen O'Hara did her own singing.
- Creator's Favorite Episode: Both John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara named this as one of their favourite roles. It was also John Ford's favourite film of his own, as he considered it his sexiest picture.
- Dawson Casting:
- John Wayne was 44 when this film was made, although his character Sean Thornton was supposed to be 35.
- Victor McLaglen was 65 at the time. Many felt he should have played Maureen O'Hara's father (31) instead of her brother.
- Deleted Scene: Several scenes were shot that never appeared in the movie:
- Mary speaking in Gaelic to greet Sean for the first time.
- A scene where Father Lonergan and Michaleen discuss betting on horses (deemed offensive because he is a priest)
- Sean's first scene on the train, where he speaks to a mother and her child gives him an apple (in the existing opening scene, Wayne deboards the train holding the apple and thanks the unseen child).
- Directed By Castmember: John Wayne directed the horse racing sequence while John Ford was ill.
- Fake Irish: Victor McLaglen was English, and several of the supporting actors were American. This even applies to Sean, as he was born in Ireland, but John Wayne was clearly not.
- No Stunt Double: John Wayne really dragged Maureen O'Hara through the mud. She got bruised by the rough terrain.
- On-Set Injury: Maureen O'Hara broke her hand slapping John Wayne during the first cottage scene, since he unexpectedly blocked the blow with his hand. Because it was filmed sequentially, she had to spend the rest of the shoot with a broken hand, without a cast on.
- One for the Money; One for the Art: John Ford had desperately wanted to make this film for years, but had trouble finding a studio to back it. He finally made a deal with Republic Pictures — which specialized in Westerns — to film a Western for them in exchange for their VERY reluctant backing on The Quiet Man. The Western Ford made was Rio Grande; The Quiet Man went on to become Republic's biggest-ever box office hit, and the studio's ONLY movie ever to earn a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. And Ford won his fourth Best Director award for this.
- Production Posse: All over the place. John Ford worked with a regular set of actors in nearly every movie he made. Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, and Victor McLaglen are the more notable names.
- Real-Life Relative:
- Town elder Dan Tobin — the grizzled, bearded fellow who jumps up from his deathbed once he hears the epic donnybrook — was played by John Ford's brother Francis Ford. The story has it they had not spoken to each other in years, but John asked Francis to star in this film and they were very amicable toward each other during production. Francis died a year later.
- Maureen O'Hara's younger brothers Charles and James Fitzsimons play Hugh Forbes and Father Paul, respectively.
- Barry Fitzgerald's brother, Arthur Shields, plays the Rev. Mr. Playfair.
- All four of John Wayne's children are sitting on the cart with Maureen O'Hara during the horse race scene.
- The Red Stapler: The town of Cong in County Mayo where the movie was filmed is now a major Irish tourist attraction because of the movie. The local pub hosts daily re-runs of the film.
- Throw It In!: At the end of the film, Mary Kate whispers something into John Wayne's ear. It was an unscripted bit of dialogue that John Ford insisted O'Hara say to Wayne in order to get an unexpected reaction on Wayne's part. The three were the only ones who know what was whispered — and with O'Hara's passing in 2015, nobody will ever know for certain what it was.
Video Game
- California Doubling: The live-action cutscenes are supposed to be in New York, but were actually filmed in Bulgaria. A giveaway is that the larger American license plates have been awkwardly placed over the narrower European plates on the cars.
- Creator Killer: The Quiet Man proved to be this for Human Head Studios. The 2010's were a horrible decade for the studio, with them being put in a really bad position ever since Bethesda unceremoniously canceled their sequel to Prey in 2014, and not counting their additional collaborations on games that ended up not exactly being successes in themselves note , The Quiet Man ended up being the studio's first game they've released and made mostly by themselves in twelve years since Prey (2006). The studio attempted to turn things around by collaborating with Kensei Fujinaga from Square Enix to create an ambitious beat-em-up/FMV combination that would not be reliant on sound. Unfortunately, what resulted was a terribly made mess with regards in gameplay, story, and presentation, that ended up as one of the worst reviewed games of 2018. The game's commercial and critical failure, combined with Troubled Production for Rune's sequel, led to the studio's closure. In an ironic twist considering the involvement of a company that screwed over their previous project, Bethesda created a new studio in Madison and gave everyone at Human Head a position there.
