Trivia

When Williams the Petroleum breaks a piece of the Englishmen's car and pretends to discover it, he says he doesn't know the English name for it, but in Welsh it's called a "beth-yn-galw." "Beth-yn-galw" translates more or less to "whatchamacallit".

Despite the implication in the film, and the real-life local legend, the story is fiction. Historians have determined that the mound at the summit of Garth Mountain (the inspiration for the movie) is a Bronze Age burial mound. In 1999, local officials and the History Society placed a sign on the mountain, telling the many climbers who've been coming there because of the movie's popularity of the site's real significance - and warning that they face two years in prison if they disturb the burial mound.

The narrator begins by remarking that "For some odd reason, lost in the mists of time, there's an extraordinary shortage of last names in Wales." Actually there is a known reason: as part of their increased domination of Wales in the 16th century, the English abolished the Welsh system of patronymics and introduced surnames arbitrarily.

It took quite a long time to find a filming location that could pass for Taff's Well in 1910; the original location (where the true story came from), to the north of Cardiff, now has several large wind turbines and electricity pylons prominently placed, and the village is surrounded by a modern industrial estate.

The tote board for bets on the hill's height prominently shows one bettor's name as "Dai Bread." Dai Bread is a character in Welshman Dylan Thomas' iconic play for voices "Under Milkwood."