The version of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" blaring on the jukebox during Bick's fight with the racist diner owner toward the end of Giant would become a hit recording.

A public service announcement James Dean made with Gig Young during filming has been given wide play in recent years. In it, the two discuss the importance of highway safety. Dean's last line was "Drive safely, because the life you save may be mine." He wears the same clothing in the spot he would be wearing the day of his fatal car crash.

Warner Bros. reissued Giant twice. In 1970, they publicized it as more timely than ever: "Even before its time it opened a window on the rebellion of youth, racial intolerance, and a lustful materialism. We think this is a film that is definitely for today." In 1996, they gave a restored print limited release.

Orson Welles' unfinished The Other Side of the Wind was inspired in part by the stories of George Stevens's problems directing Dean. The plot focuses on a Hollywood director (John Huston) trying to complete an epic film despite constant clashes with a young actor who taunts him by calling him "Fatso," just as Dean did on the set of Giant. The film features two cast members from the original film, Dennis Hopper and Mercedes McCambridge.

Ed Graczyk's 1976 play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is about a group of friends in Texas whose high-school Jimmy Dean fan club made a pilgrimage to the Marfa location of Giant during filming and even worked as extras. The leading lady believes her runaway son is the product of a one-night stand with Dean. Robert Altman directed the Broadway production, then filmed it in 1982 with the same cast, including Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black and Kathy Bates.

Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor remained close friends the rest of their lives, although they only worked together on one other film, The Mirror Crack'd (1980). His death of HIV complications in 1985 led to her involvement in AIDS charities which eventually brought her the Motion Picture Academy®'s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

The DVD chapter title for the scene in which Hudson unsuccessfully tries to get his son to ride a horse is "Uneasy Rider." In adulthood, the son is played by Hopper, who co-wrote, directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969).

The 1985 Kevin Reynolds film Fandango shows five college friends (including Kevin Costner, Judd Nelson and Sam Robards) on a 1971 pilgrimage to the film's location.

Warner's released a DVD version of the film in Canada but not the U.S. When the studio pulled the Canadian version, U.S. fans scrambled to buy copies before they disappeared. A U.S. DVD version finally came out in 2003.

In 2009, the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA, premiered a musical adaptation of Ferber's novel with music and lyrics by John LaChiusa and book by Sybille Pearson. The project had been initiated by Ferber's niece Julie Gilbert, who approached LaChiusa about it in 2004. A reading of the show was staged in New York in 2011 with Kate Baldwin, Steven Pasquale and Tom Wopat in the cast. The Dallas Theatre then picked up the production for 2012, with Baldwin returning as Leslie and Dee Hoty as Luz. The show, which received mostly positive reviews, has yet to appear on Broadway.

In Salt (2010), Angelina Jolie's title character is supposedly the vice president of Rink Petroleum, the corporation founded by Jett Rink.

by Frank Miller