David Lean’s first choice for the title role was Peter O’Toole who declined, citing the grueling experience of having made Lawrence of Arabia with Lean. This created a rift between the two that was never fully healed. Dirk Bogarde and Max von Sydow were considered for the title role but was never actually offered the part before Lean offered the role to Omar Sharif.

Neither Olivia Wilde (Quorra) nor Garrett Hedlund (Sam Flynn) were born when the original TRON was first released.

Many Disney animators refused to work on this movie because they feared that computers would put them out of business. In fact, 22 years later Disney closed its hand-drawn animation studio in favor of CGI animation. Hand-drawn animation was ultimately resumed at Disney at the behest of new creative director John Lasseter, also head of Pixar- ironically a computer animation company.

Audrey Tautou revealed that, during her audition, she asked if she could take a photo of Ron Howard and Tom Hanks to prove that she’s actually met them.

The wardrobe budget for this film was $13 million. One custom suit alone for the racers cost $60,000.

The lady that Zhivago tries to get onto the train after grabbing her baby actually fell under it and was injured. That shot was also used in the film, though we only see her fall down.

TRON is also a debugging command in the BASIC programming language, meaning “TRace ON.” However, Steven Lisberger, has stated in interviews that he took the name from the word “electronic,” and did not know about the BASIC command until later.

Ron Howard’s first envisioned choice for the role of Robert Langdon was Bill Paxton. Paxton was interested but turned it down because of scheduling conflicts. Russell Crowe was then seriously considered for the role but ultimately Howard decided on his long-time friend Tom Hanks for the role. Other actors considered for the part were Ralph Fiennes, Hugh Jackman and George Clooney.

The inside of the ice palace was mostly made up specifically formed wax.

Shooting the film lasted only 64 days. Post-production, due to the heavy special effects, required 68 weeks.