The battle scenes, which reportedly contain over 200,000 digital participants, are so huge that an extra room had to be built onto Weta Digital's effects facility to house all the computer equipment needed to render the scenes.
Viggo Mortensen estimates that, during the course of filming the entire trilogy and including all takes, he killed every stuntman on the production at least fifty times.
Cameo: [Royd Tolkien] (the author's great-grandson) as a Gondorian Ranger handing weapons to his fellow soldiers when the orcs are invading Osgiliath.
Andy Serkis and Elijah Wood were given prop rings used in the movie by director Peter Jackson. They each thought they got the only one.
The film was originally going to end with a voice-over epilogue by Cate Blanchett's character, Galadriel, detailing the fate of the fellowship of the ring after the events of the movie.
The opening scene which tells the origin of Gollum was originally shot for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), to be shown after Gollum remembers his real name (Smeagol) for the first time.
Facts and numbers about the trilogy: Over 6 million feet of film shot during production; 48,000 swords, axes, shields, and makeup prosthetics; 20,602 background actors cast; 19,000 costumes made by the wardrobe department; 10,000 crowd participants at New Zealand cricket game who made orc army grunts; 2,400 behind-the-scenes crew members at height of production; 1,600 pairs or prosthetic hobbit feet created; 250 horses used in one scene; 180 computer special-effects artists employed; 114 total speaking roles; 100 real locations in New Zealand used for backdrops; 50 tailors, cobblers, designers and others in wardrobe department; 30 actors trained to speak fictional dialects and languages; 7 total years of development for all three movies.
The film was shipped to theatres under the name "Till Death For Glory".
Theoden touching the spears of his soldiers before they charge into battle was Bernard Hill's idea.
For the scene where Merry and Pippin are smoking their pipes at Isengard, Dominic Monaghan (Merry) had to drink a glass of milk beforehand to keep himself from throwing up while smoking the pipe.
Broke the international box office record for an opening weekend, bringing in nearly $250 million.
'Billy Boyd' (Pippin) sang and composed the tune for the song in Denethor's hall (Tolkien wrote the lyric).
Andy Serkis's first scene was on top of Mount Doom near the Cracks of Doom. His last scene was the scene were Gollum and Frodo are fighting and fall off the ledge.
Gollum is missing his left ear lobe. This is due to an air trap in the casting that was made for Peter Jackson's approval of the figure. When looking at the casting, the design team concluded that it should stay that way since it looked like a battle wound that might have occurred during Gollum's past adventures.
The last spoken line of the movie - "Well, I'm back." - is also the last line of the book.
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