Did You Know?

When shooting the film, Sylvester Stallone decided that for the shooting of the fight, he and Dolph Lundgren should hit one another for real, so as to increase the intensity of the scene. After doing three takes of Rocky taking shots to ribs, Stallone felt a burning in his chest, but ignored it. Later that night, he had difficulty breathing and was taken to a nearby emergency room. It was discovered that his blood pressure was over 200, and he had to be flown on a low-altitude flight from Canada to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, where he remained in intensive care for eight days. What had happened was that Lungren had punched him so hard in the chest, Stallone's heart had slammed up against his breastbone and began to swell, cutting off the blood supply and restricting the oxygen flow throughout the body.

In reality, Soviet Heavyweights were not allowed to box professional fighters during the Cold War.

Numerous fans have stated that they find this film to be confusing in terms of the title belt, and what exactly happens to it when Rocky is in Russia. This is most likely because the scene explaining what would happen to the belt was cut from the film, and replaced with a newspaper montage. Initially, between Apollo's funeral and the Rocky/Drago press conference, there was to be a scene in which Rocky visits the U.S. boxing board. Whilst there, he is told that they will not sanction the fight, and if he goes ahead with it, he will not be allowed to carry the title. This scene was cut prior to release as it was felt to slow up the film too much, and it was replaced with the much briefer newspaper montage.

The training scenes set in Russia were actually filmed in Wyoming; the farm is located in Jackson Hole, and most of the exterior shots were filmed in the Grand Teton National Park. The fight itself was shot at the PNE Forum at Hastings Park in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Over 8000 people auditioned for Ivan Drago.

This is the only Rocky film that doesn't begin with the word "ROCKY" scrolling across the screen in some shape or form.

This is the first film in which Gonna Fly Now is not sung, although a few bars of the song are incorporated into Vince DiCola's score. Rocky V also only features part of the song in instrumental form. It wouldn't be until Rocky Balboa that the song, lyrics and all, would reappear.

Brigitte Nielsen's character (Ludmilla Drago) was not written in the shooting script, where her talking was done by Nicoli Koloff (Michael Pataki). Sylvester Stallone likely incorporated her at the last minute rewrite.

Paulie's Robot was created by the International Robotics Inc. in New York City. The robot's voice was the company's CEO Robert Doornick. Roger Ebert surmises the robot is an android of some type, complete with artificial intelligence. The robot is identified by robotic engineers as "SICO" and is/was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and toured with James Brown in the 1980s.

In the Italian dub of the movie, Ivan Drago's line "I must break you", was translated as "I break you in two" ("Ti spiezzo in due", complete with fake Russian accent). It became by far the most famous quote from the movie in Italy, and it entered into common language as a much used slang phrase.