Trivia

Filmed mostly in Morocco. Only some exterior shots were taken in Riyadh.

In 2012, Tom Hanks gave a rave review to the source novel, written by Dave Eggers.

Yousef tells Alan that the only place he has visited in the United States is Alabama. Alan, surprised, asks him, "Why Alabama?" Yousef responds, "You mean because I was the only Arab for 1,000 miles? I had a scholarship for one year in Birmingham." Birmingham, Alabama, actually has one of the oldest and most established Arab American and Middle Eastern communities in the Deep South. For example, the Lebanese-American community in Birmingham was established in the late 1800s. In 1910, St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church (the Maronites being a division of Catholicism with roots in the countries that are now Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel) was established; as of April 2018, their Lebanese Food and Cultural Festival is one of the longest-running food festivals in Birmingham.

The second collaboration between Tom Hanks and Tom Tykwer and Ben Whishaw. The first was "Cloud Atlas (2012)."

Not only does Tom Hanks finding love while snorkeling refer back to Splash (1984), in both films his character has a similar name - Alan and Allen.