History Film / FieldOfDreams

* HippieVan: The Kinsellas are shown to have been very liberal hippie-types in their youth (both went to Berkeley, both were fans of a radical author named Terence Mann, Ray jokes that his major was "the 60's"). True to their roots, Ray drives a VW bus.

** The entire PTA book banning scene was invented for the film to give Annie some characterization, and also to establish Terrance Mann as a radical author from the 1960's whose work was offensive to some (which would not have been necessary if it were Salinger.)

%% * BassoProfundo: Courtesy of James Earl Jones.

* SecretMessageWink: Moonlight Graham tells Ray his one wish: if he ever got to bat in the major leagues, to stare down the pitcher and wink, "making him think you know something he doesn't." Later, Archie bats at his first game and gives a wink to the pitcher to psych him out--giving a hint that [[spoiler:young Archie and Moonlight are one and the same.]]

Ray Kinsella (Costner) is an honest farmer with a nice family, but explains in the prologue that he and his father, who was a baseball fanatic, had a falling-out and were unable to reconcile before the latter's death. One night, Ray is out in his cornfield when he hears a disembodied voice whisper "If you build it, he will come." Surprised, he is later given a vision that what he is supposed to build is a baseball field, and that the famously disgraced (and long-deceased) "Shoeless" Joe Jackson will return from the dead to play baseball there. For obvious reasons, Ray is left wondering how he could ever get such a bizarre idea. But after a long talk with his wife Annie (Madigan), Ray decides that he wants to do something outrageous because it feels right and not be afraid of what others might think.

** [[http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/grahamo01.shtml Moonlight Graham]] was in fact a ballplayer who appeared in only one MLB game, before becoming a doctor in Chisholm, Minnesota. The film takes some liberties with his story: Graham died in 1965, but producer Creator/FrancisFordCoppola wanted to see ''Film/TheGodfather'' on a marquee, so Ray goes back to 1972 to find him. His single game was also played in 1905, not 1922.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The famously reclusive author Terence Mann was the famously reclusive author Creator/JDSalinger in the original book, but Salinger threatened to sue if he was featured in any adaptation of the novel. Also counts as a RaceLift. Mann is also [[CompositeCharacter partly based on Creator/JamesBaldwin]], a black novelist and critic strongly associated with 1960s radical politics.