Actors Donovan Leitch Jr. and Carnie Wilson are the respective children of musicians Donovan and The Beach Boys' singer and composer Brian Wilson, both of whom are heard in the soundtrack. Jason Nesmith, son of ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith, also appears.
In the scene where Katie Herlihy (Julia Stiles) and her baby are walking through the Haight-Ashbury after she's just quit her job at the strip club, the man she walks by prior to having her purse stolen is supposed to be Charles Manson.
The line that Sarah (Jordana Brewster) says to Kenny (Jeremy Sisto), "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," is the first line of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl".
Brian's dad is all amped up about him going to Notre Dame. Brian says he doesn't have the grades. In the movie Rudy (1993), he didn't have the grades, but he ended up making it. Charles S. Dutton, who plays Reverend Taylor, played the lead maintenance man in the movie Rudy, whom Rudy becomes very close to.