In an interview, Steven Spielberg said this was the third most difficult movie he has made in his career, behind Les dents de la mer (1975) and Il faut sauver le soldat Ryan (1998).
During the race sequence, when King Kong appears, the theme from the original 1933 film composed by Max Steiner is played.
The spell cast to use the Orb of Osuvox is from the movie Excalibur. In modern Irish Gaelic, it's "Anáil nathrach, ortha bháis is beatha, do chéal déanaimh," which means, "Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making."
Besides the obvious Bigfoot, Delorean, and Akira vehicles, other notables in the race were the Mach 5, Batmobile, A Team van, V8 Interceptor, Christine, the Porkchop Express from Big Trouble In Little China and the Trans-Am from Smokey and the Bandit, the RV from Space Balls.
The Zemeckis Cube is named after director Robert Zemeckis. When the cube is activated, the music playing is from the Retour vers le futur (1985) trilogy, directed by Zemeckis. Alan Silvestri composed the score for both the Back to the Future trilogy and this film.