25 Surprising Facts About ‘Home Alone’

On November 16, 1990, what appeared to be a fun-filled little family yarn about a kid left to his own devices at Christmastime and forced to fend off a couple of bungling burglars became an instant classic.

Today, no holiday movie marathon is complete without a viewing of Home Alone, the movie that turned Macaulay Culkin into one of the biggest kid stars of all time. And while you may be able to recite its dialogue line for line, here are 25 things you might not know about the John Hughes-penned picture. So settle in and enjoy, ya filthy animals.

1. Without Uncle Buck, there’d be no Home Alone.
2. The role of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone was written specifically for Macaulay Culkin.
3. Macaulay Culkin wasn’t the only Culkin to appear in Home Alone.
4. Casting Kieran Culkin in Home Alone taught Chris Columbus a very important lesson.
5. Home Alone was a Guinness World Record holder for more than 25 years.
6. Home Alone’s unprecedented success led to its title becoming a verb.
7. Home Alone spawned more than a sequel.
8. Poland loves Home Alone.
9. The McCallister home from Home Alone has become a major tourist attraction.
10. Kevin’s tree house in Home Alone was not part of home rental deal.
11. All of Home Alone was shot in the Chicago area.
12. Robert De Niro turned down the role of Harry Lime in Home Alone.
13. Joe Pesci got all Method on Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.
14. Joe Pesci wasn’t used making a “family-friendly” movie like Home Alone.
15. Daniel Stern had a four-letter word slip-up on the Home Alone set, too.
16. In real life, Harry and Marv may not have survived Kevin’s brutal attack in Home Alone.
17. The ornaments that Marv steps on in Home Alone would cause the least amount of damage.
18. The tarantula on Stern’s face? Yep, that was real.
19. John Candy wrapped his filming on Home Alone in one day.
20. The actress who played Kevin’s older sister is a judo champ.
21. Don’t bother trying to get your hands on a copy of Angels With Filthy Souls.
22. Old Man Marley wasn’t in the original screenplay.
23. The Lyric Opera of Chicago benefited from the movie’s snowfall.
24. Marv was supposed to have gotten a spinoff.
25. If you believe that Elvis is still alive, then you might believe that he is in Home Alone.

Without Uncle Buck, there’d be no Home Alone.

The idea for Home Alone occurred to John Hughes during the making of Uncle Buck, which also starred Macaulay Culkin. Always game to play the precocious one, there’s a scene in which Culkin’s character interrogates a potential babysitter through a mail slot. In Home Alone, Culkin has a similar confrontation with Daniel Stern, this time via a doggie door.

The role of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone was written specifically for Macaulay Culkin.

But that didn’t stop director Chris Columbus from auditioning more than 100 other rascally pre-teens for the part. Which really was all for naught, as Culkin nailed the role.

Macaulay Culkin wasn’t the only Culkin to appear in Home Alone.

Macaulay's younger brother Kieran also landed a part in Home Alone, as Kevin’s bed-wetting cousin, Fuller. Though the film marked Kieran’s acting debut, he has since gone on to build an impressive career for himself in movies like The Cider House Rules, Igby Goes Down, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and FX’s Fargo. In 2019, 2020, and 2022, Culkin received Golden Globe nominations for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for his work in Max's Succession. In 2024, he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series—Drama for his performance in that series.

Casting Kieran Culkin in Home Alone taught Chris Columbus a very important lesson.

Since Home Alone, Columbus (who also wrote the scripts for Gremlins and The Goonies) has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s premier family-friendly moviemakers as the director of Home Alone 2, Mrs. Doubtfire, and two movies in the Harry Potter franchise. But one lesson he learned from Home Alone is that when you agree to work with a kid actor, you’re also agreeing to work with that kid’s family.

“I was much younger and I was really too naïve to think about the family environment as well,” Columbus told The Guardian in 2013. “We didn’t know that much about the family at the beginning; as we were shooting, we learned a little more. The stories are hair-raising. I was casting a kid who truly had a troubled family life.” In 1995, Culkin’s parents, who were never married, engaged in a very public—and nasty—legal battle over his fortune.

Home Alone was a Guinness World Record holder for more than 25 years.

In its opening weekend, Home Alone topped the box office, making $17,081,997 in 1202 theaters. The movie maintained its No.1 spot for a full 12 weeks and remained in the top 10 until June of the following year. It became the highest-grossing film of 1990 and earned a Guinness World Record as the highest-grossing live-action comedy domestically. It held on to that title for quite some time—27 years, to be exact—until the Chinese blockbuster Never Say Die knocked it out of the top spot in 2017.

Home Alone’s unprecedented success led to its title becoming a verb.

In his book Who Killed Hollywood? And Other Essays, the late Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman admitted that the unexpected success of Home Alone contributed a new phrase to the Hollywood lexicon: to be Home Aloned, meaning that other films suffered at the box office because of Home Alone’s long and successful run. “More than one executive said to me, ‘My picture did 40, but it would have done 50 if it hadn’t been Home Aloned,’” Goldman wrote.

Home Alone spawned more than a sequel.

While all of the main, original cast members reprised their roles for Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (with Columbus again directing a script by Hughes), the success of the original led to a full-on franchise, complete with four sequels, three video games, two board games, a novelization, and other kid-friendly merchandise (including the Talkboy).

Poland loves Home Alone.

Showings of Home Alone have become a Christmas tradition in Poland, where the film has aired on national television since the early 1990s. And its popularity has only increased. In 2011, more than 5 million people tuned in to watch it, making it the most watched show to air during the season.

The McCallister home from Home Alone has become a major tourist attraction.

Located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, the kitchen, main staircase, and ground-floor landing seen in the film were all shot in this five-bedroom residence. (The dining room and all other first-floor rooms, with the exception of the kitchen, were shot on a soundstage.) In 2012, John and Cynthia Abendshien, who owned the home when it was used as one of the film’s locations, sold the property for $1.585 million.

Kevin’s tree house in Home Alone was not part of home rental deal.

Kevin’s backyard tree house was not originally part of the property. It was constructed specifically for the movie and demolished once filming ended.

All of Home Alone was shot in the Chicago area.

Though the main plot point is that the McCallister family is in Paris while Kevin’s back home in Illinois, the production was shot entirely within the Chicago area. The scenes supposedly set at Paris Orly Airport were actually shot at O’Hare International Airport. And those luxurious business class seats they’re taking to Paris? Those were built on the basketball court of a local high school—the same school where the scene in which Kevin is running through a flooded basement was filmed (the “basement” in question was actually the school’s swimming pool).

Robert De Niro turned down the role of Harry Lime in Home Alone.

As did Jon Lovitz. Then Joe Pesci swept in and made the part his own. Bonus fun fact: The character is a slight homage to Orson Welles. (It was the name of Welles’s character in Carol Reed’s The Third Man.)

Joe Pesci got all Method on Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.

In order to get the most authentic performance possible, Joe Pesci did his best to avoid Macaulay Culkin on the set so that the young actor would indeed be afraid of him. And no one would blame the young actor for being a bit petrified, as he still bears the physical scar from one accidental altercation. “In the first Home Alone, they hung me up on a coat hook, and Pesci says, ‘I’m gonna bite all your fingers off, one at a time,’” Culkin recalled to Rule Forty Two. “And during one of the rehearsals, he bit me, and it broke the skin.”

Joe Pesci wasn’t used making a “family-friendly” movie like Home Alone.

Considering that Pesci’s best known for playing the heavy in movies like Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Casino, it’s understandable that he wasn’t quite used to the whole family-friendly atmosphere on the set of Home Alone—and dropped a few f-bombs as a result of that. Columbus tried to curb Pesci’s four-letter-word tendency by suggesting he use the word “fridge” instead.

Daniel Stern had a four-letter word slip-up on the Home Alone set, too.

And it wasn’t cut out of the film. He utters the word “shit” when attempting to retrieve his shoe through the doggie door (look for it at the 55:27 mark on the DVD).

In real life, Harry and Marv may not have survived Kevin’s brutal attack in Home Alone.

BB gun shots to the forehead and groin? A steaming hot iron and can of paint to the face? A flaming blowtorch to the scalp? The Wet Bandits endure an awful lot of violence at the hands of a single 8-year-old. So much so that neither one of them should have been walking—let alone conscious—by the end of the night.

In 2012, Dr. Ryan St. Clair diagnosed the likely outcome of their injuries for The Week. While a read-through of the entire article is well worth your time, here are a few of the highlights: That iron should have caused a “blowout fracture,” leading to “serious disfigurement and debilitating double vision if not repaired properly.” And the blowtorch? According to Dr. St. Clair, “The skin and bone tissue on Harry’s skull will be so damaged and rotted that his skull bone is essentially dying and will likely require a transplant.”

The ornaments that Marv steps on in Home Alone would cause the least amount of damage.

"Walking on ornaments seems pretty insignificant compared to everything else we’ve seen so far,” said Dr. St. Clair. “If I was Marv, I’d be more concerned about my facial fractures.” Fortunately, the "glass" ornaments in question were actually made of candy. (But just to be on the safe side, Stern wore rubber feet for his barefoot scenes.)

The tarantula on Stern’s face? Yep, that was real.

At one point, Kevin places a tarantula on Marv’s face. And it was indeed a real spider (Daniel Stern agreed to let it happen—but he’d only allow for one take). What wasn’t real? That blood-curdling scream. In order to not frighten the spider, Stern had to mime the scream and have the sound dubbed in later.

John Candy wrapped his filming on Home Alone in one day.

But what a long day it was: 23 hours to be exact. John Candy was a regular in many of John Hughes’s movies, and Gus Polinski—the polka-playing nice guy he plays in Home Alone—was inspired by his character in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

The actress who played Kevin’s older sister is a judo champ.

Two years after appearing in Home Alone, Hillary Wolf—who played Kevin’s older sister Megan—landed the lead in Joan Micklin Silver’s Big Girls Don’t Cry … They Get Even. She also appeared in Home Alone 2, but hasn’t been seen on the big screen since. But there’s a good reason for her absence: In 1996 and 2000, she was a member of the Summer Olympic judo team for the U.S.

Don’t bother trying to get your hands on a copy of Angels With Filthy Souls.

The Jimmy Cagney-like gangster movie that Kevin channels as his inspiration throughout Home Alone? Don’t bother searching for it on eBay. It’s not real. Nor is its sequel, Angels With Even Filthier Souls, which is featured in Home Alone 2.

Old Man Marley wasn’t in the original screenplay.

Kevin’s allegedly scary neighbor, who eventually teaches him the importance of family, wasn’t a character in the original script. He was added at the suggestion of Columbus, who thought the film could do with a stronger dose of sentimentality.

The Lyric Opera of Chicago benefited from the movie’s snowfall.

When filming of Home Alone wrapped, the production donated some of the artificial snow they had created (the stuff made from wax and plastic) to the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It has since been used in a number of their productions.

Marv was supposed to have gotten a spinoff.

Greg Beeman’s 1995 film Bushwhacked, which stars Daniel Stern as a delivery guy on the run after being framed for murder, was originally intended to be a spinoff of Home Alone. The storyline would have been essentially the same: After giving up a life of crime, Marv would have been framed for the same murder.

If you believe that Elvis is still alive, then you might believe that he is in Home Alone.

No hit movie would be complete without a little conspiracy theory. And in the case of Home Alone, it’s that Elvis Presley—who died in 1977—makes a cameo in the film. Yes, that’s right. The king is alive and well. And making a living as a Hollywood extra.

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A version of this story ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2024.