Rambo: First Blood Part II - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Rambo: First Blood Part II or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Rambo: First Blood Part II

[toni]

Sylvester Stallone had worked with Martin Kove in Death Race 2000 (1975).

[toni]

When Sylvester Stallone ranked his preference of the Rambo films on the UK chat show, The Graham Norton Show (2007), he ranked this one 4th, his least favorite, as it was "like a cartoon".

[sandra]

The original director of photography fell ill shortly before filming began and the producers were in a panic to find a last minute replacement who was willing to travel to Mexico. As sheer luck would have it, actor Steven Berkoff discovered in a phone call to a mutual friend that legendary British DOP Jack Cardiff happened to be holidaying close by at the time. He mentioned it to Sylvester Stallone who jumped at the chance to get the Oscar winning 70 year old veteran on-board and hurriedly brought it to the attention of the producer and then contacted him. Cardiff was initially reluctant to accept the job as he had only just finished work on the Stephen King film adaptation, Cat's Eye (1985), and was only intending to have a quiet vacation before returning home to the UK. But Stallone's persistence plus a substantial fee for six weeks work proved too much of a temptation.

[violet]

Co-writer James Cameron claims that he only wrote the first draft of the script, and that Sylvester Stallone made many changes to it. Cameron had originally paired Rambo with a humorous sidekick, and had fleshed out the prisoners of war with elaborate backstories that were to be revealed over the course of the film. However, Stallone reportedly didn't like that the sidekick got all the cool dialogue, and also scrapped most of the POW's backstories to the point where Cameron claimed that "they might as well have gotten to the jungle to pick up a six-pack of beer". When the film was released, the political content of the movie was considered controversial, with many feeling that the Vietnam War was altered to look and sound heroic. Cameron commented that he only wrote the action, and that Stallone wrote the politics.

[gabriel]

The film is second Rambo film released in the 1980s.

[steve]

This is the second time or, depending on how it's viewed and presented, the third time that John Rambo was shown being tortured. In First Blood (1982), flashbacks show that he was tortured in a Vietnamese prison camp during the war. These flashbacks occurred due to Galt, Ward, and the other deputies presently abusing and torturing him at the police station which triggered his PTSD. In this film, it's the Vietnamese and Russian soldiers who continuously tortured him after he was captured during his botched mission.

[aaron]

According to the documentary We Get to Win This Time (2002), the producers considered teaming up Sylvester Stallone with his Staying Alive (1983) protégé John Travolta (who was once considered to play Rambo himself in the first film) as Rambo's young partner in rescuing the American POWs. Stallone nixed this idea when he decided it would be better to make the film a solo project.

[ethel]

Nicknamed the "baseball grenade", a M68 Fragmentation Grenade is featured in the film. They actually take about 3-7 seconds to detonate, but that would've slowed down the action.

[frederick]

The red shirt Rambo wears in this movie can also be seen in First Blood (1982) when the cops are searching Rambo's backpack at the police station.

[ronnie]

This was actress Julia Nickson's first film role. The production found her in Honolulu, Hawaii.

[terry]

According to the Rambo Survival Mode on DVD, Rambo attended Rangeford High School and graduated in 1965.

[chad]

Despite its anti-government stance, President Ronald Reagan was a big fan of this film.

[kristen]

The first film in the series which Rambo fights Russians.

[oscar]

The ending in which Rambo dispatches Podovsky with a rocket launcher was a reshot. That accounts for the windscreen of Rambos helicopter initially having a hole in it yet it is intact for the rest of the journey back to base. The original sequence just involved Rambo shooting Podovsky's helicopter down but test audiences said that this wasn't dramatic enough.

[javier]

Remarkably this film has a great deal of foundation in fact. In the early 1980s US Delta Force commandos prepared for a possible mission to rescue US prisoners of war held in Southeast Asia just as they do under Colonel Trautman. However their efforts were stymied by Colonel Bo Gritz, like John Rambo a much decorated former Green Beret and Vietnam War veteran, who launched his own abortive attempts to stage a private rescue raid. A subsequent government inquiry headed by Senators/Vietnam veterans Bob Smith, John Kerry and John McCain (himself a former POW who was held and tortured for 5 years) concluded there were no prisoners left behind and vilified individuals perpetuating the idea as attempting to defraud desperate families.

[caroline]

The handgun used by Banks during the aborted helicopter landing of Colonel Trautman is a SIG-Sauer P226, making this the first feature film using SIG-Sauer handguns. The pistol had been developed as a contender for the official sidearm of US Army personnel.

[clayton]

Body Count: 85 (74 at the hands of Rambo.)

[tammy]

Temperatures during filming sometimes reached 120 degrees.

[aaron]

During a conversation with Co, Rambo says '...I am expendable'. Twenty-five years after the release of this film, Sylvester Stallone directed and starred in The Expendables (2010).