17 Utterly Fascinating "Home Alone" Facts You Might Be Shocked To Not Have Known Sooner

A real tarantula crawled across Daniel Stern's face when he played one of the Wet Bandit burglars in the first film.

With the holidays in full swing, the Home Alone films are once again at the forefront of what to watch with your family, friends, or even by yourself if you're in need of some yuletide cheer.

20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved, Courtesy: Everett Collection.

Whether it's your first time watching the films or your 500th, here are 17 facts about the Home Alone franchise that may just make you appreciate the movies more than you already do:

20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection.

1. Screenwriter John Hughes may have come up with the film's premise while heading on a family trip.

20th Century Fox Film Corp/ courtesy of Everett Collection

At least, that's according to his son, James Hughes, who wrote as much in a 2015 oral history of the film for Chicago magazine. FYI, the photo above is John on the set of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

2. Before Chris Columbus signed on to direct Home Alone, he was considering shooting another Christmas movie that John Hughes also wrote: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

20th Century Fox Film Corp / courtesy Everett Collection, Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection

However, Chris told Chicago magazine he had two meetings with Christmas Vacation's lead Chevy Chase, and both didn't go well. "I called John [who was producing the film] and said, 'There’s no way I can do this movie. I know I need to work, but I can’t do it with this guy.' John was very understanding. About two weeks later, I got two scripts at my in-laws’ house in River Forest. One was Home Alone, with a note from John asking if I wanted to direct."

3. John Mulaney almost auditioned to play Kevin.

Cindy Ord / Getty Images

John grew up in the Chicago area and said on Live with Kelly in 2016 that, when he was part of a children's sketch comedy group as a kid, his parents were asked by a talent scout if John could audition for the movie. "My parents said, 'We're going to take a few days to think about it.' I went to the doctor one day to get a booster shot. And before he gave it to me, my mom said, 'Your dad and I have talked it over, and we don't want you to audition for that movie.'" 

4. Chris Farley auditioned to play Santa.

Nbc / NBCUniversal via Getty Images

"[Chris Farley] auditioned for the Santa Claus role, and he was not in particularly great shape. We had an 8 a.m. audition with him on a Saturday morning, and I’ll never forget it. Chris and I knew each other from New York because we went to the same church on Sundays. I’d see him and we’d talk, and he was the sweetest guy in the world. He came in, and I don’t think he had gone to sleep that night so the audition did not go particularly well. I regret it. I think he would’ve been great in the film, but I do love the guy who played Santa Claus [Ken Hudson Campbell]. He was very funny," Chris Columbus told the Independent in 2020.

5. Succession star Kieran Culkin, who is Macaulay's younger brother, has a small role in the first two films as Kevin's cousin Fuller.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

6. The family that owned the Home Alone house lived in it while the movie was being filmed...for about five and a half months.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

"In that house, there’s a master bedroom suite with four rooms. Basically, we just moved into that. We put a hot plate up there to cook. We didn’t have to cook that much, because we had full access to the food truck that the crew used, which our daughter, who was 6 at the time, loved," John Abendshien, who owned the home at the time, told Chicago magazine.

7. However, most of the movie's interior shots were filmed at a high school.

20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection.

"We were able to make a deal that allowed us to use it, originally, for offices, and then we basically ended up taking over the whole school. I remember in prep, during lunch, everyone would play roller hockey in the hallways," associate producer Mark Radcliffe told Chicago magazine.

8. It "killed" Catherine O'Hara to talk back to Macaulay in the scene where she sends Kevin to the attic.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

"He's mouthing off about the family, and I say, 'Well, you'd be pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had no family.' He said, 'No I wouldn't.' And I was supposed to say, 'Then say it again. Maybe it'll happen,'" Catherine said earlier this month at Macaulay's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony. "I can't tell you how much that killed me. I could not wrap my head around saying something so horrific to this beautiful child. Of course, I was not yet a mother at the time, and I had no idea the kind of things that would come out of my mouth with my own two sons."

9. The tarantula that crawls on Daniel Stern's face was real.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

Daniel told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015 that the crew had a real and a fake tarantula on set. However, they wouldn't remove the real tarantula's "stinger" as it would cause the spider to die. "And I said yeah, but if you don’t take it out, I’ll die.’ But everyone seemed cool with it, so I just had them put the friggin‘ tarantula on my face,” he said.

10. The "Keep the change, ya filthy animal" movie isn't a real movie.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

“We really wanted to do an homage to the movie [Angels with Dirty Faces], but we really didn’t watch it a lot,” Home Alone cinematographer Julio Macat told the Hollywood Reporter in 2020. Angels with Filthy Souls, which was created for Kevin to watch in the first movie, was inspired by Angels with Dirty Faces, a real 1938 film starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. "We just wanted the feel of a classic gangster film," Macat said of their fake film, which proved so convincing that the likes of Seth Rogen, Nick Kroll, and even Macaulay Culkin thought it was a real movie.

11. John Candy improvised most of his scenes in the first film.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

"Apparently, because he only showed up and did one day of work and most of what he did in Home Alone was improvised. There's all that about how he left a kid at a funeral home...that's amazing. It's one day's work. If you see the big chunk of movie that he's in, [it's] all in, like, some 20-something-hour-long day. That's mostly improvised," Kieran Culkin told Esquire in April 2023. "The man was brilliant."

12. However, John was reportedly only paid $414 for his work.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

"There was certainly a little resentment on John's part," Chris Columbus told Business Insider in 2020. "It was a deal between him and John Hughes at the time. I never met John Candy before he came on the movie. I don't know if John ever got any kind of compensation from Fox." Chris also added about subsequently directing John in the 1991 movie Only the Lonely, "There were a couple times on set when he would make a cutting remark about Fox and what he was paid."

13. Macaulay Culkin didn't see his Home Alone money until he turned 18.

20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection

"I call it 'The Slip of Paper' meeting, where they put a number on a piece of paper and slide it across the table," he told Ellen DeGeneres in 2018. "And then, boom, there you go. I felt like some kid worked really, really hard, and I inherited all of his money."

14. Catherine O'Hara took less money than she was initially offered on Home Alone 2 so she didn't have to be on call for all of filming.

20thCentFox / Courtesy Everett Collection

"So on the first Home Alone, I was available to them for the whole shoot, and I was in Chicago the whole 12 weeks. If I went out for the day either shopping or sightseeing — and this was before cellphones — then I’d have to call in every once in a while to the first or second AD and be like, 'Do you need me?'" she told Vulture in 2019. "I’m kind of a homebody, so for the second one, I didn’t want to have to be there for the whole shoot because I knew I wasn’t in every scene. So I took less money, which was still an insane amount of money, and they condensed my work."

15. Joe Pesci actually burned his head while filming Home Alone 2.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

"In addition to the expected bumps, bruises, and general pains that you would associate with that particular type of physical humor, I did sustain serious burns to the top of my head during the scene where Harry's hat is set on fire," he told People in 2022.

16. Joe also avoided Macaulay Culkin on set to maintain their characters' "adversarial relationship."

20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

"[I didn't] want it to come across on the screen that we were in any way friendly," the actor also told People.

17. And, finally, if you didn't know: Scarlett Johansson stars in Home Alone 3.

Disney+ / Via disneyplus.com

She even showed the film to her daughter a few years ago. "I just wanted her to make the discovery," Scarlett told People in 2021. "Of course, she didn't because how can an 11-year-old me remind her of me now? And I said, 'Who's that person?!' She was like, 'You?'"