Trivia / The Ref

• The Danza: Dr. Wong is played by B.D. Wong.
• Focus Group Ending: As mentioned below, the film's ending was re-shot because test audiences hated the original one.
• Out of Holiday Episode: Set on Christmas Eve 1993, released in the middle of March 1994. This was lampshaded by its teaser that was shown around the 1993 holiday season:
  The Ultimate Christmas Movie
  is coming This Spring
• Technology Marches On:
  • The One Last Job of cat burglar Gus goes badly wrong, and he forces a local upper middle class couple to hide him from police patrols in their house. There's a problem though: it's Christmas Eve, and the extended family is already on the road, so there's no possible way to cancel them coming over now! Instead they have to improvise by having Gus pretend to be the dysfunctional couple's marriage counselor, pretending to attend the dinner with them. The film came out in '94; it's a pretty safe bet that within the next five years or so the extended family would have had cell phones and could have been called off with a convincing lie.
  • At one point, Gus has to give his partner the couple's home phone number to call when the partner figures out a way to sneak Gus past the cops patrolling the area. Inconveniently, one time when the partner tries calling the house a cop checking the houses of the neighborhood picks up the phone instead. Today, it would be assumed that Gus and his partner would have cell phones that they would be calling directly, and it's pretty unlikely that such a scenario would ever come up.
• What Could Have Been: The original ending of the film would've had Gus turn himself in as a lesson to Jesse. Test audiences reacted very negatively to the ending, so it was reshot to what it is now.

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