Various facts you may or may not know.

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  • Theoden touching the spears of his soldiers before they charge into battle was Bernard Hill's idea.

  • For the scene where Merry and Pippin are smoking their pipes at Isengard, Dominic Monaghan (Merry) had to drink a glass of milk beforehand to keep himself from throwing up while smoking the pipe.

  • Broke the international box office record for an opening weekend, bringing in nearly $250 million.

  • Billy Boyd (Pippin) sang and composed the tune for the song in Denethor's hall (Tolkien wrote the lyric).

  • Andy Serkis's first scene was on top of Mount Doom near the Cracks of Doom. His last scene was the scene were Gollum and Frodo are fighting and fall off the ledge.

  • Gollum is missing his left ear lobe. This is due to an air trap in the casting that was made for Peter Jackson's approval of the figure. When looking at the casting, the design team concluded that it should stay that way since it looked like a battle wound that might have occurred during Gollum's past adventures.

  • The last spoken line of the movie - "Well, I'm back." - is also the last line of the book.

  • John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) originally auditioned for the role of Denethor.

  • The Minas Tirith set was built on the same site as Helm's Deep, after the Helm's Deep scenes had been shot and the set completely torn down.

  • Peter Jackson is arachnophobic.

  • According to a magazine article, Peter Jackson hated the Army of the Dead and wished it was not in the script. He thought the army was too unblieveable. The army was only kept to keep it as an element from the book, not wanting to upset die hard fans of the Book Trilogy.

  • Dominic Monaghan was allergic to the elven cloaks the Fellowship wore. Before scenes were shot, Peter Jackson used to joke around and say "Are we ready to go? Does Dom have his cape on?"

  • The confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf from the second book was filmed but was not included in the final cut for reasons of length and pacing. The scene will be included on the DVD.

  • The live-action Rohan army is made up of several hundred New Zealander extras, who responded to an open casting call for anyone who could ride a horse.

  • When Frodo is writing the book, the top of the page notes that Sam was elected Mayor of Hobbiton.

  • The Lord of the Rings trilogy became the most nominated film series in Academy Award history with 30 nominations, surpassing both the Godfather trilogy (28) and the Star Wars franchise (21).

  • The first sci-fi/fantasy movie to win a top category since 1985 (Don Ameche won Best Supporting Actor for the sci-fi film Cocoon (1985)).

  • The movie tied with Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997) to win the most Oscar's (11) in a single year.

  • It broke another record by winning all the Oscars for which it was nominated (11 out of 11). The previous record was nine out of nine by Last Emperor, The (1987) and nine out of nine by Gigi (1958).

  • The deformed orc leader Gothmog is based on the alien leader from Peter Jackson's earlier movie Bad Taste (1987).