After writing, directing, and producing a number of coming-of-age comedies that have since become generational touchstones for Gen X and millennials, John Hughes shifted his focus to adult characters for this feature. Centering upon two strangers with little in common besides their painstaking quest to reach Chicago in time for Thanksgiving, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles uses gross-out gags, cringe humor, slapstick, and a string of profanity to gradually tease out a meditative story centering upon found family, overcoming societal assumptions, and finding humanity in the depths of grief.