YMMV / The Pelican Brief

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Victor Mattiece's only appearance in the novel is very bizarre. The CIA agent who visits him is taken blindfolded to an isolated location, where he meets with the Big Bad — a deranged tycoon dressed only in a pair of gym shorts, with overgrown nails and unkempt hair, walking only on towels and living in a compound that's described as smelling of rubbing alcohol. Leaving aside the Howard Hughes cliche, their only interaction is Mattiece complaining that the titular brief was too widely distributed and then his thug has the CIA agent killed. The end. It's never mentioned again. Perhaps rightly, this was the one scene the film just ignored completely.
• Retroactive Recognition: Cynthia Nixon as one of Darby's classmates. If it weren't for the different character names, one could assume that we're seeing Miranda in her law school days.