The artificial snow used in the filming of the mega-hit Home Alone was donated to the Lyric Opera of Chicago after shooting along the North Shore was completed. It has since been used in several opera productions.

The prop Lincoln Park Zoo mailbox used in the romantic comedy Return to Me proved to be a production nightmare, requiring a movie staffer to stand guard so that visitors to the zoo didn't actually drop letters into it.

During the downtown parade scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, several Chicagoans who were not hired as extras (including a construction worker and window washer) began dancing to the music. The director found it so funny he told his cameramen to film it and included the shots in the movie.

In the original script for The Untouchables the famous slow-motion gun battle was supposed to take place on a stopped train. But when the film studio announced that using a period 1930s train for the scene would be too expensive, the director opted to shoot it on the steps of Chicago's Union Station instead.

In Road to Perdition, shot extensively around the Chicago area, the grocery store in the background of the scene where the reporter draws a gun as he approaches the Geneva Hotel was actually a coffee shop in disguise. The coffee shop was used as a craft services area for the movie crew and the coffee shop employees were kept on during filming, serving the big stars and the rest of the cast.

Chicago's historic Wrigley Field was used to portray nearly all of the ballparks in the Babe Ruth biopic The Babe. Danville Stadium in Central Illinois stood in for Fenway Park and Forbes Field.

Mermet Springs, a scuba diving park in Southern Illinois, only paid $1 for the airplane used in the action thriller U.S. Marshals. Moving the 22-ton plane from the Ohio River was far more costly, requiring that it be cut in half and transported via barge to Mermet Springs. There the plane was sewn back together and submerged in Mermet's spring-fed quarry, where divers today can actually swim through its hollow hull.

The Rockford Peaches women's professional baseball team, depicted in A League of Their Own, played at Beyer Stadium in the 1940s. Unfortunately, the original Rockford stadium was in serious disrepair and could not be used as a location for the film. All that is left of it today is the original archway, although you can see an exhibit on the Peaches (including photos and authentic memorabilia) at Rockford's Midway Village & Museum Center.