Jump to:
Spoilers (2)
In the scene where Chris (Vin Diesel) and Seth (Giovanni Ribisi) are waiting outside Greg's (Nicky Katt) house, we never see the car move or get turned on. Before they shot the scene Ben Affleck was sitting in the car, listening to music. He accidentally took the car keys home with him. They absolutely had to shoot the scene that night and couldn't find Ben. They shot the scene with the car where it is and lit up the house so there wouldn't be a reflection of the camera and crew.
Ratner's, the famous Lower East Side restaurant Seth and his family eat dinner in, is also a restaurant that Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider stake out in The French Connection (1971).
Greg tells Chris to get his "One Race" hands off his money. Chris is played by Vin Diesel, who's production company is called One Race Productions.
The chips used in Seth's casino were made by American Standard Molding (ASM) which makes custom chips for casinos and home games.
Ben Affleck's speech to the new recruits is very similar to a speech given by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Affleck took over Baldwin's The Hunt for Red October (1990) role in The Sum of All Fears (2002), appeared with Baldwin in Pearl Harbor (2001), and played Baldwin on an episode of Saturday Night Live.
The building JT Marlin is located in is actually in Westbury / Garden City NY and is the same building that one of the two companies the movie is based on, Continental Broker Dealer Corp, was housed in before it was shut down. It was not located at exit 53 off the LIE, which is where the other company was located.
When Seth is visiting the office at night, he looks through a stack of contracts, which he notices all have the same names on them. One of the names is co-producer E. Bennett Walsh.
Giovanni Ribisi and Vin Diesel previously starred in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Also Giovanni Ribisi and Scott Caan starred in Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) together.
Spoilers
A different ending, in which Seth's main victim, Harry goes to the Boiler Room armed with guns and ostensibly seeking bloody revenge, was scrapped in favor of the FBI bust ending. This alternate ending is found on the DVD.
The plot of the movie is loosely inspired in the life of Jordan Belfort, which biography was later depicted by Martin Scorsese in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).