While shooting the scene where Michael Douglas (Oliver Rose) and Kathleen Turner (Barbara Rose) are sitting in the chandelier, director Danny DeVito pretended to break for lunch while the two actors were 30 feet above ground.
It's popularly rumored that the filmmakers inserted a short shot of the couple's dog into the "pâté" scene after screen testing audience thought it was too cruel. According to Danny DeVito, the dog was always intended to appear; however, it originally wasn't shown until the end of the chandelier scene, and that particular insert was a late addition.
In August 2009, Richard Shenkman held his ex-wife, Nancy Tyler, hostage for over 13 hours in their South Windsor, CT home after becoming obsessed with this movie-basing some of his actions on the movie itself. Fortunately, Tyler was able to escape, although Shenkman burned her home down. He was tried and given a 70-year sentence.
One of the film's main trailers featured a sing-a-long jingle that summarized the movie's story-line by spoofing the lyrics to the classic 1780 English Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas." The words to the song said: "In the War of the Roses my true love gave to me, twelve traps a flying, lots of orchids dying, piles of statues breaking, all the walls a shaking, lots of flying chairs, tumbling down the stairs, five broken teeth, four fractured bones, three cracked ribs, two wrecked cars, and a puppy in a pâté. Woof." The line about orchids refers to a scene that was deleted from the film, but can be seen in the DVD extras.
According to director Danny DeVito the first assembled cut of the film ran 3 hours and 4 minutes. It was then cut down to its final length of 1 hour and 56 minutes. Some of the deleted scenes (ca. 20 minutes) can be seen in the trailers and in the deleted scenes montage on the LaserDisc and the Special Edition DVD.