- Biggest winner: Slumdog Millionaire, with best picture, best director, and six other Oscars.
- Number of posthumously awarded Oscars: 1, to Heath Ledger, for The Dark Knight. Ledger was only the second actor in Oscar history to win posthumously. The first was Peter Finch, who won in 1977 for Network.
- Biggest-grossing movie not nominated for best picture: The Dark Knight, with receipts of $1 billion worldwide. Other movies that hit that magic mark, according to trade publication Box Office: Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
- Most nominated movie with the least number of wins: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13 nominations and just three wins — in the categories of make-up, art direction, and visual effects. Button is the most-nominated film to have lost the best picture Oscar, breaking records set by The Color Purple and The Turning Point, which had 11 each. Button‘s nominations total was just shy of Titanic’s 14, in 1998. The latter film won a record-tying 11 Oscars.
- Number of winners in the female acting categories with non-American accents: 2 (all of them) – Brit-born Kate Winslet, as a former Nazi guard, with a German accent, in The Reader; Penelope Cruz, as an emotionally volatile Spanish woman in Vicky Christina Barcelona.
- Number of American-born performers who won in acting categories: 1, California native Sean Penn (Milk). Winslet was born in England, Ledger in Australia, and Cruz in Spain.
- Number of American-born show hosts: Zero. Hugh Jackman was born in Australia.
- Number of nominated songwriters born in the U.S.: Zero. A.R. Rahman was nominated for “Jai Ho” (the winner) and “O Saya,” both from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, and UK-born Peter Gabriel was nominated for “Down to Earth” (Wall-E)
- Number of actors who gave extended impressions of other actors: 1 – Ben Stiller, mocking Joaquin Phoenix’s bizarre David Letterman appearance, in one of the evening’s funniest moments.
- Longest speech: 3 minutes, 21 seconds (Penn)
- Shortest speech: 28 seconds (director of animated short La Maison en Petit Cubes)
- Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes (about average)
- Jack Nicholson appearances: Zero. Where was he?
- Winners whose speeches were cut off by music: Donald Graham Burt, art director for Benjamin Button
(Thanks to a piece in USA Today for some of the stats provided in this post)