Aled Jones, the singer of single "Walking in the Air" that was released in 1985, three years after the film, is much more widely known than Peter Auty who sang the same song in the film. Many people mistakenly believe that Aled Jones also sang the song in the film. Jones sang the chart release because the song had been re-recorded for an advertisement for an English toy store's Christmas campaign (which also featured new animation).
On December 23, 2020, Duncan Jones found the scarf his father David Bowie wore in the introduction. After sharing a photo of it on Twitter, Brian Harding, who produced the introduction, responded to it with a little backstory: The scarf was knitted by a woman in the accounts department of TVC, the production company of the animation. She visited the set and gave the scarf to Bowie. After filming ended, he asked the woman if he could keep it for his son. It was the only fee he charged for his performance.
When this program first aired on PBS stations in the United States, it featured a newly filmed introduction by David Bowie instead of Raymond Briggs on the grounds that the animation needed a star.
The boy has no name in the original Briggs cartoon book. However, the makers of the film required a name for the gift tag attached to the gift given to him by Santa Claus and selected "James" after the boyfriend (later husband) of one of the animators.
The short film had 3 different versions of the intro: the original intro had author Raymond Briggs playing adult James walking through the countryside telling his story of The Snowman; the second intro had David Bowie playing adult James who's seen in the attic of his house, telling the story of the Snowman and finding the scarf that the Snowman gave to him; and in the third intro, Father Christmas (Mel Smith) is seen in his living room and mentions that he hosted the Christmas party which the Snowman and James attended, and he sits in his chair and watches The Snowman (1982) on TV.
Raymond Briggs: The illustrator of the book, uncreditedly, voices as Older James' Narration at the start of the program.