"The climactic fight scene was shot in the middle of a heatwave, with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. Many of the actors playing the Uruk'hais had to be carried off the set with heat exhaustion."

"Production designer Grant Major personally supervised the translation of all the writings in Balin's tomb into Dwarvish. He was then horrified to learn that a visiting J.R.R. Tolkien scholar had taken great offence at seeing the phrase "Joe was here" among the writings. They scoured the contents of Balin's tomb and found nothing, only to learn that the scholar - who was overly serious about everything to do with Tolkien - had been told this by a crew carpenter who has having a joke at his expense. Intrepid fans later published screen captures and translations of Moria wall segments where the runes spelled "John was here" and "Made in New Zealand"."

"It is estimated that filming of the trilogy pumped about $200,000,000 into the New Zealand economy. The New Zealand government even created a Minister for Lord of the Rings, whose remit was to exploit all the economic opportunities the films represented."

"Fans were offered the chance to have their names in the special edition's hugely lengthy closing credits for $39.95."

"Hobbiton was made a year before production began to make it look like it was a natural, lived-in place, complete with real vegetable patches. The greens department regulated the length of the grass by having sheep eat it."

"The large tree that stands above Bag End was built especially by the production department. Every leaf had to be manually attached."

"1800 Hobbit feet were made for the production."

"During the Council of Elrond, leaves are continually falling in the background to suggest that this is a meeting that is taking place outside. This meant about half a dozen crew members were positioned above the set, dropping leaves at various intervals. This also meant that the production department had to collect sacks and sacks of leaves during autumn, and of course dead leaves turn brown fairly quickly. Which also meant that every single one of those leaves had to be individually painted."

"The nocturnal screams of possums were used for the screeches made by the Orcs in the mines of Moria."

"The main sound elements for the cave troll were a walrus, a tiger and a horse."

"The total crew amounted to over 3,000 people of which approximately over 300 were in the art department alone."

"It's common practice with a high budget feature film to have more than one unit shooting at any one time, usually two or three. With "The Lord of the Rings", there were occasions when there would be between five and seven units shooting at any given time."

"Usually on a feature film, when the director comes to view the dailies, there's about 20-25 minutes of footage to be seen. Because of the number of different units out filming at any one time, the dailies for "The Fellowship of the Ring" were about 3-4 hours long, ie, the length of the finished film."

"During filming, most of the members of the Fellowship took up surfing in New Zealand in their spare time. Among them was Viggo Mortensen, who wiped out terribly one day, and bruised one whole side of his face. The next day, makeup tried to mask the bruising and swelling, but were unsuccessful. Instead, Peter Jackson opted to film Mortenson from one side for the entire scene. In the scene in the Mines of Moria when they find the grave of Gimli's relative, Aragorn is only seen from one side in the whole scene."

"During filming, most of the members of the Fellowship took up surfing in New Zealand in their spare time. Among them was Viggo Mortensen, who wiped out terribly one day, and bruised one whole side of his face. The next day, makeup tried to mask the bruising and swelling, but were unsuccessful. Instead, Peter Jackson opted to film Mortenson from one side for the entire scene. In the scene in the Mines of Moria when they find the grave of Gimli's relative, Aragorn is only seen from one side in the whole scene."

"Christopher Lee reads "The Lord of the Rings" once a year and has done so since the year it was published, and is the only member of the cast and crew ever to have met J.R.R. Tolkien."

"During the fight between Lurtz and Aragorn, Viggo Mortensen successfully parried the dagger thrown at him on his first attempt."

"In order to make "forced perspective" a bit more interesting, the filmmakers devised a totally new system consisting of a pulley and a platform. When the camera moved (which is normally impossible as the forced perspective would become obvious) the actor(s) also moved, and the perspective (7-foot Gandalf - 4-foot hobbits) would always be okay. They also used three differently sized props (large, medium, small) to interact with the different sized characters"

"1,460 eggs were served to the cast and crew for breakfast for every day of shooting."

"Dominic Monaghan (Merry), wore a fat suit made of foam. He drank three liters of water a day so he would not dehydrate."

"Sean Astin gained 30 pounds for his role as Samwise."

"Viggo Mortensen did his own stunts. He also insisted on using only the real steel sword, instead of significantly lighter aluminum sword or safer rubber sword which were manufactured for battle scenes and stunts."

"John Rhys-Davies, who plays Gimli the dwarf, is the tallest of the actors who play members of the Fellowship."

"After the New Zealand premiere, director Peter Jackson joined the actors who played the nine members of the Fellowship by getting a commemorative tattoo of his own. While their tattoos were the Elvish symbol for "9", Jackson received an Elvish "10"."

"Peter Jackson gave one of the rings used in the movies to both Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis as gift when the shoot was finished. They both thought they had the only one."

"The three trolls which were turned to stone in "The Hobbit" are in the background during the scene where Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Strider/Aragorn are resting after fleeing from Weathertop/Amon Sul."

"Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, changed its name to Middle Earth for the film's opening."

"Ian McKellen based Gandalf's accent on that of J.R.R. Tolkien himself."

"Gandalf's painful encounter with a ceiling beam in Bilbo's hobbit-hole was not in the script - Ian McKellen banged his forehead against the beam accidentally, not on purpose. But Peter Jackson thought McKellen did a great job "acting through" the mistake, and so kept it in."

"Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), who is trilingual in English, Spanish, and Danish, requested the script be revised to let Aragorn speak more of his lines in Elvish."

"The Orc blacksmiths shown beneath Isengard are actually the WETA Workshop staff who made the weapons used in the film."

"The different colors of blue for the elves' eyes revealed what race they were. The Lothlorien elves had light blue eyes, and the Rivendell elves were dark blue."

"Bilbo's cake caught fire as he was about to leave the party, but Ian Holm gamely finished the scene."

"Over 12.5 million plastic rings were made in order to fabricate simulated chain mail for the movie. Two crew members spent the length of the shoot linking the rings by hand into suits of armor. By the end of production, they had worn the fingerprints off their thumbs and index fingers."

"Viggo Mortensen kept his sword with him at all times off set so that he could remain in character. He was questioned several times by police after reviewing his training sessions with the sword and being spotted by members of the public."

"When Frodo falls on the snow and loses the ring, a close-up of the ring with Frodo in the background is shown. In order to keep both the subjects focused, a giant ring (6 inches of diameter) was used."

"The scream of the Ringwraiths is actually Fran Walsh, the co-writer and co-producer of the film."

"The cast often had to fly to remote shoot locations by helicopter. Sean Bean (Boromir) was afraid of flying and would only do it when absolutely necessary. When they were shooting the scenes of the Fellowship crossing the snowy mountains, he'd spend two hours every morning climbing from the base of the mountain to the set near the top, already dressed as Boromir. The crew being flown up could see him from their helicopters."

"Peter Jackson's original plan was to exclusively hire British actors for the roles of the hobbits. As it turned out, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan were the only ones, and one of the tasks he charged them with was to coach Elijah Wood and Sean Astin in the ways of British pub culture."

"While filming the trilogy, Viggo Mortensen got so into character that during a conversation, Peter Jackson referred to him as "Aragorn" for over half an hour without him realizing it."

"When the hobbits are on screen, they always walk from the left of the screen to the right, never the other way around (because of the movie convention that West-East travel is represented by left-right movement)"

"During Bilbo's party Pippin can be seen in the band playing a guitar."

"When Bilbo finds the Ring at the start of the movie Gollum shouts "My Precious" however Andy Serkis wasn't on set that day so Dominic Monaghan stood in for him."

"When Pippin is being hit with the apples after asking about second breakfast, it is Viggo Mortensen himself chucking the apple at his head. They had to shoot the scene 16 times to get it just right, and Billy Boyd says he believes Mortensen enjoyed himself immensely."

"Gimli's line "Nobody tosses a dwarf!" was filmed after the "Toss me" line in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

"Stuntwoman Lani Jackson doubled for Arwen for some fight scenes that were cut from the film. Jackson does appear in the film trilogy as various stunt orcs."

"Every actor in the film wore a wig apart from Billy Jackson, the director's toddler son, seen listening wide-eyed to a tale told by Bilbo Baggins at his birthday party, had the perfect Hobbit hair."

"Peter Jackson has the entire Bag End set in storage, hopefully for future use."

"Viggo Mortensen purchased Arwen's horse after production and gave it to Liv Tyler's riding double."

"Peter Jackson can be glimpsed outside the Prancing Pony holding a carrot. Originally it was supposed to be a pipe, but after a couple of puffs, he felt sick and went for the carrot instead."

"Boromir's speech at the Council of Rivendell is read from a sheet of paper sitting on Sean Bean's lap as it was only given to him the night before."

"John Rhys-Davies is 6 foot 3 (which is actually the perfect proportional height for Gimli in relation to the Hobbits)."

"Liv Tyler had never read any of the books when she was approached to appear in the film. She quickly boned up on Middle Earth lore, to the extent of even learning some Elvish."

"Orlando Bloom landed the role of Legolas two days before he finished drama school."

"Before production began, it had to be determined whether computer effects could convincingly create battle scenes featuring thousands and thousands of warriors. Peter Jackson invested his own money in the pursuit of this software."

"Co-producer Rick Porras's wedding ring was the template for the One Ring."

"Richard Taylor's Weta Workshop made over 45,000 individual items from prosthetics to armor for the films."

"Costume designer Ngila Dickson had 40 seamstresses working for her, creating over 19,000 costumes."

"Viggo Mortensen joined the film when it was already shooting, never having met Peter Jackson before, nor indeed having read the Tolkien books either. It was Mortensen's 11 year old son Henry Mortensen who was the chief instigator in convincing Mortensen to sign on as Aragorn."

"When the dragon firework goes off at the party, the shriek heard is Billy Boyd actually screaming, as he was unaware at the time that the firework was really going to explode on set (he thought that it would be put in digitally). It was not scripted, but that take ended up in the final film."

"A rubber puppet with a horrific face was superimposed over Ian Holm's face when Bilbo Baggins catches a glimpse of the ring again in Rivendell. Holm was so delighted with the puppet that the design team had a cast iron version of it made for his mantelpiece and gave it to him as a parting gift when Holm wrapped all his scenes on the film."

"Throughout the trilogy, the color of Legolas' eyes change from blue to brown. This is because the contact lenses Orlando Bloom was wearing scratched his corneas and could not be worn every day. In some of the shots, the post production team digitally changed the color of his eyes."

"According to Sean Astin in the extended DVD commentary, when Bilbo drops the ring before leaving Hobbiton the floor was magnetic to prevent the ring from bouncing. This was done to demonstrate the importance and weight of the ring."

"In one take of the Bucklebury Ferry scene, Elijah Wood overshot his jump and ended up in the river instead of on the Ferry."

"Bill Bailey auditioned for the role of Gimli."

"Since the Balrog is supposed to be a stone demon, the sound it makes was created by grinding stone tiles together."