Trivia
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Spoilers (2)
Sylvester Stallone wanted the Simon Phoenix character to be played by Jackie Chan. Chan refused, since Asian audiences don't like the idea of actors who have always played heroes suddenly playing evil characters.
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Many of the cars in the movie were prototypes of future models, supplied by General Motors.
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For some non-American releases, references to Taco Bell were changed to Pizza Hut. This includes dubbing, plus changing the logos during post-production. Taco Bell remains in the closing credits. In both the Dutch and Swedish releases the subtitles still use Taco Bell while the sound and picture have been altered as above.
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The "ray gun" used by Wesley Snipes in the Museum Armory sequence is based on the Heckler and Koch G11, a prototype weapon for the German army that would have been the most advanced rifle in the world, firing caseless ammunition (bullets, not death rays).
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At one point, Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) says to John Spartan "While you were sleeping... ", referring to the time he was frozen. Bullock later starred in the movie While You Were Sleeping.
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The building used for exterior shots of the SAPD building was the California Headquarters of GTE in Thousand Oaks.
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In the strange attempt to entirely replace the Taco Bell name with Pizza Hut (the name was dubbed over and computer generated images of the logo were pasted over), the editors missed a spot. At the start of the battle outside the restaurant, when everyone is flocking to the window, one pane still holds the logo for Taco Bell and the Taco Bell sign is visible in the first shot of the van (in the background when people are running) on the door. The logo can also be seen on the waiter's jackets as dinner is served.
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Wesley Snipes's kicks and punches sometimes look lurchy and awkward. Snipes is a black belt in real life, and his kicks and punches were so fast that they blurred on camera. Hence the producers asked him to slow them down.
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Lenina Huxley tells John Spartan about the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library, explaining that, based on the sheer popularity of his movies, a Constitutional amendment was passed in order for Schwarzenegger to run for president, which, according to Huxley, he did. In 2003, ten years after this film's release, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California and shortly after his election, three senators separately proposed amendments to the US Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to become president. Additionally, Stallone, along with Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Demi Moore backed the opening of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain.
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The title was taken from The Police's song of the same name. Hence, the use of Sting to remake the song for the film.
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The two original choices for the roles were Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme was offered the role of the bad guy, but didn't want that role. He agreed to star in it if both the lead roles could be switched, the producers tried to get Seagal to play the bad guy, he declined.
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Sandra Bullock's costume during the Taco Bell sequence was made of stones and gems weighing approximately 40 pounds. After the fight scene outside the restaurant when her character gleefully jumps and replays the action, her dress actually started to rip, which is why she is holding her arms to her sides after Stallone walks away.
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In an early scene, set after the first MDK (Murder Death Kill), the name Scott Peterson is listed as one of the cryo-prisoners. The name appears listed before Simon Phoenix on a computer display, which the character Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) has called to the screen. This is merely a coincidence, however, as Scott Peterson was not a public figure until he was tried for the murder of his wife during 2004-2005.
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Though the movie was released in 1993, Simon Phoenix and John Spartan were supposed to have been imprisoned in the cryo-prison in 1996. In the scene where Wesley Snipes' character Simon Phoenix is releasing the other cryo-prisoners, he makes a reference to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer was killed in prison in 1994, after the film's release but before the cryo-prison would have been built. During TV replays, the Dahmer references were edited out because they seemed anachronistic.
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Lenina Huxley's name is a combination of Lenina Crowne and Aldous Huxley. Crowne is a character in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' (1932), a novel about a future society where everything is predetermined for you so as not to offend others(among other reasons) and where showing even moderate emotion is considered to be unusual and possibly even illegal. Crowne's first name Lenina itself was chosen by Aldous Huxley after the pseudonym of the first dictator of the Soviet Union, Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov).
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The action figure of the Demolition Man in full armor is actually a repainted He-Man action figure from the line of 1990.
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In Kuwait the Arabic title of the movie in the cinemas was "Rambo The Destroyer". The idea is that, seeing the Rambo movies were very popular, associating Sylvester Stallone to Rambo in the title would perhaps sell more tickets.
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The music used in the trailer is the cue "Vampire Hunters" by Wojciech Kilar. It was originally written for Dracula.
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Sandra Bullock's character Lenina Huxley is asked "Where did you learn to kick like that?" Her reply was from watching Jackie Chan movies. Jackie Chan is a good friend of Sylvester Stallone.
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Sylvester Stallone has stated, in interviews, that the idea behind the three seashells was that two were used like chopsticks or to clamp together to pull waste out of the body and the third was used to scrape what was left over. No explanation was made about how they were to be cleaned or sanitized between uses.
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Even though Jonathan Lemkin was the last writer working on the movie and drafted its shooting script, he lost the Writers Guild arbitration and his name does not appear in the credits. However, the movie's novelization lists him as one of the authors of the screenplay.
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The screenwriting process for the film became incredibly convoluted as far as both the number of writers involved and the changes between drafts along with the wildly divergent ideas different producers have. At one point, Peter M. Lenkov, Jonathan Lemkin and actor Craig Scheffer were all claiming credits and/or working on the film at the same time. The situation only cleared itself when Joel Silver took on chief production values; he paid all of the writers substantial amounts of money to go away, then used the work of Lemkin along with body-and-fender work from writer Daniel Waters (whom Silver had worked with on "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane").
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Spoilers
According to the commentary found on the RC1 DVD, there were some scenes deleted from the movie including a subplot involving Spartan's daughter and the murder of Zachary Lamb by Phoenix.
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According to the scripts (before the final draft) the film starts out in 1998 and goes over to 2042 as John Spartan and Simon Phoenix were frozen for 44 years. In that draft a CryoCon was named Ignatious and was changed to Howie, while Howie was written out and replaced with a thug already released in according to what was cut out of the movie. Beppo was Albert. Kodo was Beppo. Adam (played by Jesse Ventura) was Charlie and Jesse Ventura's character dies in the underground battle assumed to be killed by armed scraps - or Denis Leary's character that was, in that draft, Thomas Payne - when John Spartan went after Simon Phoenix. It is then that Elvin, who was the CryoCon that kicked the chair out of the way when Cocteau was killed, that kills Cocteau in that draft rather than the CryoCon played by Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Then, according to what was cut out or not filmed, John Spartan either kills or incapacitates Elvin.
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