Trivia / While You Were Sleeping

• The Danza: Peter Gallagher as Peter Callahan.
• Dueling Shows: Mrs. Winterbourne, a movie released around the same time with a similar plot (young woman is confused for the fiancée of a man she barely knows following an accident involving a train, and finds herself Becoming the Mask in the process as the man's family embrace her as one of their own).
• Star-Making Role: This movie along with Speed is credited with helping to launch Sandra Bullock's career in The '90s.
• Throw It In!: The transition scene with the paperboy falling off his bike? Completely accidental but the director left it in the finished movie.
• What Could Have Been: Lots of it.
  • The movie was originally about a man pretending to be the fiance of a woman in a coma, but the producers decided to swap the gender roles when it came off as a little too predatory.
  • Chris Columbus was originally to direct with Geena Davis and Harrison Ford as initial candidates for the lead roles. But Columbus "got iffy" and Roger Birnbaum (then the head of Disney's Caravan Pictures unit) reached out to Jon Turteltaub.
  • Various potential leads were considered, including Nicole Kidman, Meg Ryan, Demi Moore and Julia Roberts; ultimately Sandra Bullock got the part after a great audition (though Bullock also believes it was because of Moore's unavailability). For the role of Jack, James Spader, Dylan McDermott and even a young Matthew McConaughey (who didn't get the gig in part because of his thick Texas accent) before Bill Pullman got the part.
  • The film was written to take place in New York City originally; they changed it to Chicago because it was cheaper to film there.
• Working Title: Coma Guy.