The Foo Chow is a real restaurant in Chinatown. As of August 2024, there is still a sign that states, "...Rush Hour was shot here".
According to director Brett Ratner, this movie was the first movie to be released in the U.S. featuring Jackie Chan in an English-speaking role without any kind of dubbing. According to Ratner, before this movie, Chan always had his voice dubbed over in his English-speaking roles because of his uncertainty in speaking the language. However, Chan spoke in his real voice for his previous Hollywood films Battle Creek Brawl (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981), Cannonball Run II (1984) and The Protector (1985). For this movie, Ratner claims to have convinced him to forgo the dubbing, as it would lend to the authenticity of his character.
Chris Tucker improvised much of his dialogue, as he normally does in his movies. According to director Brett Ratner, during the scene at Grauman's where Detective Carter bribes Stucky for information, there was so much improvisation between Tucker and John Hawkes that they almost did not think they could edit it together as a coherent conversation. There are still continuity errors in the dialogue for this reason.
This film inspired the creation of the website Rotten Tomatoes. Site founder Senh Duong is a big Jackie Chan fan and built the website to collect reviews for all of Chan's Hong Kong films as they were being released in the United States. He coded the site in two weeks putting it up shortly before the release of this film. Rotten Tomatoes is now one of the most notable sources for movie reviews and its Tomatometer rating is used to judge a film's success and used in advertising and award promotions.
The film was a massive success, grossing over $244 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing martial arts film at the time.