Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Walter Robinson are visible in the background during the baseball game.
Walter Robinson said of Michael Keaton, "It is like watching yourself in a mirror, yet having no control of the mirror image."
During an interview on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air", director Tom McCarthy said that they built a large set to depict many of the Boston Globe offices, where parts of the story take place. When the reporters depicted in the movie first visited the set, they gravitated to "their" desks, and many of them started to arrange the items on those desks the way they had been at the time.
When Michael Keaton accepted the role, he had tracked Walter Robinson before meeting him, and found out he lived near Robinson's house. He had also gotten hold of video and audio of Robinson. When Keaton first met him, he did an impression of him that was so impressive, that Robinson was scared, and said to him, "How did you know everything about me? We just met."
Jimmy LeBlanc, who plays Patrick McSorley, was himself an actual survivor of the clerical abuse scandal, so when director Tom McCarthy first brought him in for rehearsals with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci, he was concerned that 'revisiting' Jimmy's abusive past might be too emotionally traumatic for him. However, as McCarthy later accompanied Jimmy out after the session, he asked him if he was freaked out by his first 'acting' experience with the other actors. "Of course I'm freaked out," Jimmy said, "that was the Hulk, and Batman, and that guy from The Devil Wears Prada."
Ben Bradlee Jr.: As a reporter with a notepad listening to his fictional self, played by John Slattery, after the 9/11 attacks.