Trivia for
The Terminal (2004) More at IMDbPro »

• Inspired by the story of Merhan Nasseri, an Iranian refugee. In 1988, he landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris after being denied entry into England because his passport and United Nations refugee certificate had been stolen. French authorities would not let him leave the airport. He remained in Terminal One, a stateless person with nowhere else to go. He has since been granted permission to either enter France or return to his own country. He instead chooses to continue to live in the terminal and tell his story to those who will listen. Reportedly, his mental health has deteriorated over the years. When given the opportunity to live in France, he refused because the documents did not name him as "Sir, Alfred", and he claims to have forgotten his native Persian language. Reportedly, he left the terminal in August 2006 to be hospitalized for an unspecified illness.
  
  
• Bernie Mac was considered for a role, but had to pull out due to a scheduling conflict.
  
  
• While this is not technically a remake, the film Tombés du ciel (1993) is based on the same true story.
  
  
• Steven Spielberg cut a line from the film where Hanks's character is getting help using a phone card and says, "Home phone, home phone!". Spielberg cut this because he didn't want comparisons to _E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)_ and the famous lines "Phone home."
  
  
• A majority (if not all) of the flights on the departure board were flights operated by members of the Star Alliance. United Airlines is a founding partner of the Star Alliance.
  
  
• When Amelia does her makeup at the table while sitting with Viktor, she pulls out an Elizabeth Arden compact. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who played Amelia, is currently a spokeswoman for Elizabeth Arden cosmetics.
  
  
• The Musak playing over the intercom during Viktor's first night in the terminal is the same music played during Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002).
  
  
• Tony Randall appears, uncredited, in the "I Love New York" television advertisement in the movie.
  
  
• Although Viktor comes from the fictional country of Krakozhia, the language he speaks in the movie is Bulgarian. The written material shown (the Fodor's guide and the magazine page with the jazz greats) is in Russian. The label on the Planters peanuts can is neither in Bulgarian nor in Russian. Viktor's driving license is issued in Gomel, Republic of Belarus, and has a woman's name on it (written in Cyrillic).
  
  
• The photo Viktor shows Amelia featuring a group of all the top jazz musicians in NYC in the year 1958 was originally taken for Esquire by Art Kane. It is the subject of the 1994 documentary A Great Day in Harlem (1994).
  
  
• The film was shot with two endings. The original version of the film, previewed in Orange, California on 26 May 2004, had the other ending, in which Catherine Zeta-Jones's character Amelia goes into Manhattan with Viktor. The changes to the film caused the start date of Spielberg's next film, led _Munich (2005)_ to be pushed back a number of weeks, which meant that Ben Kingsley could no longer appear in it, due to his commitment to appear in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005).
  
  
• In the bookstore, Viktor is reading "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss.
  
  
• The terminal set was a near-full-size replica built in a former hangar, with three working sets of escalators, and populated by many familiar stores (e.g. Burger King, Mrs. Fields, W.H. Smith). Some of these brands were recruited by Dreamworks, while others approached the studio when word of the production got out. Many of the stores and restaurants were built by the construction crews that build actual mall and airport stores for the respective companies, and some had fully-functioning equipment (e.g. ovens, cash registers, etc). However, the inclusion of a brand on the set was not a guarantee of inclusion in the film; Dreamworks retained full control over editing, and some brands appear only briefly or not at all.
  
  
• Each failed application for entry to the USA counts against your chances of eventually being allowed in, so Viktor was actually hurting his cause by applying every day.
  
  
• The main character of this movie was originally scripted to arrive from Slovenia but this was changed after the advice from the former consul of Republic of Slovenia in the United States Mark Rijavec. Since Slovenia is by some considered to be Switzerland of the Eastern Europe it would not look credible would a civil war be started in one of the new members of the European Union.
  
  
• The note on the photocopy of the hand attached to the sign "All Gates" says "FREE THE GOAT".
  
  
• When Viktor is about to be forced onto the plane back home, Dixon pulls up a chair with a cup of coffee in his hand, watches the security camera screens, and whistles the melody to "For All We Know (We May Never Meet Again)".
  
  
• When "the war is over" and where Tom Hanks and other people sing the national anthem they sing The Albanian National Anthem in "gibberish" words.
  
  
• During the credits, everyone's name is their autograph.
  
  
• When Viktor buys the "New York" book from the book store, the book he is holding is "2001: A Space Odyssey", a favorite film of both Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
  
  
• The photo Viktor possesses is the award-winning photo "A Day in Harlem" by Art Kane.
  
  
• Selected as the opening film of the 2004 Venice Film Festival.
  
  
• In the scene where Tom Hanks is avoiding the security camera near the exit, the camera is of the Espree line manufactured by Pelco in Clovis, CA. The motor noises had to be added to the film, because the Espree PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) features operate virtually silently.
  
  
• The girl with the suitcase that Viktor tries to help is Steven Spielberg's daughter Sasha.
  
  
• The Napoleon book Amelia buys at Borders is 'Napoleon Bonaparte' by Alan Schom.
  
  
• Dreamworks paid Merhan Nasseri a rumored $250,000 for the rights to his story.
  
  
• Officer Dolores Torres (Zoe Saldana) is referred to as a "Trekkie" and in one scene even performs the Vulcan salute. 5 years later, Saldana would play Lieutenant Uhura in J.J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek (2009) series.
  
  
• Cameo: [Benny Golson] The saxophone player who Tom Hanks asks for his autograph at the New York hotel just before he starts to perform. He was also the reason Hanks' character wanted to come to New York and to honor his father's memory by obtaining the final autograph missing from his deceased father's collection of jazz autographs.
  
  
• Another Trek reference for Zoe Saldana is her character's name, Officer Torres. The name of the half human, half Klingon engineer in "Star Trek: Voyager" (1995).
  
  

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