Home Alone fans, let out your best aftershave-induced scream: The Christmas comedy celebrates its 25th anniversary today! That’s right, it has been a quarter century since the cheese-pizza-seeking smart aleck Kevin McCallister got left behind while the rest of his family travelled to Paris. This forced our precocious (and surprisingly sadistic) protagonist to defend his family’s palatial pad from a pair of bumbling burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) with an arsenal of homemade booby traps.

Today, no holiday binge-watch is complete without a viewing of the Chris Columbus’ classic. It’s the movie that turned Macaulay Culkin into one of the biggest kid stars of all-time, became the top-grossing live-action comedy in the U.S., and made zip-lining into a treehouse the ultimate childhood dream. To mark this cinematic milestone and the beginning of the It’s Appropriate to Watch Christmas Movies Even Though It’s Not Even Thanksgiving Yet season, here are ten little-known facts about the John Hughes-penned Home Alone to hold you over until the slapstick classic is simultaneously playing on three different channels and you catch yourself calling everyone “filthy animals.” This is it! Don’t get scared now!


1. Macaulay Culkin's iconic scream was improvised.

The image of a yowling Kevin after slapping a stingy splash of cologne to his cheeks remains synonymous with the film’s poster and comedic plot. According to director Chris Columbus’ recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, however, this iconic moment was not written that way in the script. Although Culkin screaming with his palms on cheeks on the movie’s poster is supposedly influenced by Edvard Munch’s painting, “The Scream,” it was apparently just as much a product of Macaulay’s comedic instincts. I guess life does imitate art.


2. Both Pesci and Stern struggled to curb their foul-mouthed tendencies during filming.

With paint cans hitting you in the face and doorknobs branding letters into your hand, it is not surprising if you let out a few of George Carlin’s no-no words. Pesci, a little too used to the profanity parade of his prior flick, Goodfellas, had to reminded that he was on the set of a family film and that dropping the f-bomb was not that chill. To ease Pesci’s difficult transition to the world of PG, Directer Chris Columbus suggested he substitute in the word ‘fridge’ as a compromise. Daniel Stern did not quite get the memo though as one instance of his colorful language made it into the final cut of the film. As Marv is retrieving a lost boot through the ‘doggy door’, he accidentally mutters “s***” and it can still be heard on the DVD version. Skip to 55:27 if you’re interested…


3. Kevin's brother's girlfriend is a dude!

When Kevin stumbles upon a picture of his older brother’s boo, he grimaces and cries, “Buzz, your girlfriend — woof!” As Home Alone actor, Devin Ratray, told Yahoo!, the photo of Buzz’s dog noise inducing girlfriend was actually the art director’s son who volunteered to dress up like a girl for the picture. Chris Columbus deemed it too cruel to laugh (and bark) at a real girl like that. I can’t help but wonder where that kid is now and more importantly, does he cite that as his conversation-starting fun fact?


4. Macaulay Culkin's stunt double was a 30-year-old man.

It might seem obvious now that the filmmakers did not let nine-year-old Macaulay Culkin to sled down the stairs and out of a house, fall through five shelves of toys, zipline 50 feet in the air into a wooden box in a tree, or any of the other highly dangerous stunts this mischief filled movie required. But what is less obvious is that they found a 30-year-old man, named Larry Nicholas, who was roughly the same size as the not yet a decade-old Culkin. So good luck unseeing that the next time you watch this movie.


5. Don't go searching for "Angels With Filthy Souls" on Netflix because it does not exist.

The movie that Kevin pops into the VCR with a label that says Angels With Filthy Souls, the one that successfully scares off pizza boys and robbers alike, is not a real film but rather footage specifically created for Kevin McCallister’s universe. The fake movie scenes were shot on cardboard sets before filming for the rest of Home Alone began.This fictional gangster movie is a play on the classic film Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. And just in case it needs to be said, the sequel, Angels With Even Filthier Souls, which is featured in Home Alone 2 is also fake.


6. A French director claimed ‘Home Alone’ was a rip-off of his movie.

French filmmaker Rene Manzor alleged that John Hughes had stolen the idea for Home Alone from his jarring thriller 3615 Code Pere Noel (or Game Over in America) about a kid who defends his home and feeble grandmother from a deranged lunatic dressed as Santa by turning his toys and home appliances into deadly weapons. Manzor tried to reach a settlement with Fox and threatened to sue over the two film’s similarities, which I’m sure went about as well as the whole Taylor Swift “haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate” lawsuit debacle.


7. Kevin's older sister is a world champion in Judo IRL.

Hillary Wolf played snarky older sis Megan McCallister in Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York before hanging up her acting towel. But this was no premature bow as Wolf went on to represent the United States as a second-degree black belt in Judo in the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics. Maybe the McCallister should’ve left her home alone to deal with the Wet Bandits…possible title: Home Alone 6: Karate Kid Hijinks.


8. Kevin's plane ticket can be seen briefly in the trash can after Peter McCallister cleans the counter.

I can finally put to rest the question that has haunted me for years: why wouldn’t the McCallister family notice Kevin’s absence when they presented his airline ticket at the boarding gate? Someone on Reddit posted an animated GIF presenting this cleverly inserted plot-hole defying “easter egg.” During your rewatch, pay extra attention in the beginning of the film when Kevin and Buzz accidentally spill milk over everyone’s plane tickets and passports (around the 9-minute mark). His dad quickly cleans up, tossing the napkins in the trash, and then the camera lingers on the garbage can for an extra second. You probably didn’t think anything of it even as you watched it for the umpteenth time on Christmas. But upon closer inspection, you’ll see Kevin’s plane ticket was tossed away along with a banana peel and a hopefully empty can of Reddi-Whip. If ever there was a proper time to slap your hands on your face and scream, it is now.


9. Pesci bit his finger!

When Harry and Marv manage to outwit that little sadist Kevin, they hang him from his sweater by a coat hook and begin to enact their revenge. Fortunately, “Old Man Marley” and his trusty snow shovel show up just in time to save him. Just before Marv gets a face full of shovel, he starts to bite Kevin’s fingers off “one at a time.” Talking to Contact Music in 2004, Macaulay Culkin whined: “During rehearsal he actually bit me. He broke the skin and everything! I still have the scar. I was like, ‘I don’t care how many Oscars you have, or whatever – don’t go biting a nine-year-old! What the heck’s wrong with you?” To which Pesci undoubtedly said, “Go fridge yourself.”


10. Elvis has not left the building.

Many of those conspiracy theorists who believe that Elvis Presley is still alive maintain that the heavily bearded man standing in the background of the scene where Mrs. McCallister is shouting at the airport desk clerk (just before she meets John Candy) is the King himself. In other words, Elvis who had been dead for thirteen years when Home Alone started filming, decided to be an extra in a children’s Christmas movie in order to troll everyone in the world. If you squint really hard, you might also spot 2Pac.

source: http://decider.com/2015/11/16/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-home-alone/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow

What about baby's day out.