Dr. Strangelove Trivia from IMDb
  • Peter Sellers was cast in four roles, but experienced problems when trying to develop a Texas accent for Major T. J. "King" Kong. After Sellers coincidentally broke his leg, Kubrick was forced to find another actor. Convinced that nobody could have acted the part as well as Sellers, Kubrick decided to cast someone who naturally fit the role. Remembering his work on the western One Eyed Jacks (1961), Kubrick cast Slim Pickens as Kong, the gung-ho hick pilot determined to drop his bombs at any cost. Pickens was never shown the script nor told it was a black comedy; ordered by Kubrick to play it straight, he played the role as if it were a serious drama - with amusing results.
  • Sellers based Dr. Strangelove's strangled accent on the voice of Weegee, the famous German-born crime photographer of the 1950s whose name was given by New York police due to his uncanny ability to show up at murder scenes before they did. Sellers heard Weegee talking during an on-set visit and adopted his strange German accent for the title character.
  • The photographic mural in General Ripper's office, presumably showing an aerial view of Burpelson AFB, is actually a view of Heathrow Airport, London.
  • General Turgidson (George C. Scott) was not scripted to fall over in the war room when he gets excited, but when it happened, Kubrick decided it was in character, and left it in.
  • In Terry Southern's script, Muffley has a bad cold. Peter Sellers played this up so hilariously that the cast kept breaking up during filming, but Kubrick then decided to make him a foil for everyone else's craziness instead, and reshot the scenes with Sellers now playing the role straight.
  • The illuminated symbols on the War Room map displays were cutouts lit by individual floodlights behind them. These generated so much heat that the display was quickly damaged and special air-conditioning had to be installed.
  • Major Kong's plane's primary target is an ICBM complex at "Laputa". In Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, Laputa is a place inhabited by caricatures of scientific researchers.
  • In the novel by Peter George the two H-bombs are named "Hi There!" and "Lolita." Two years earlier, Kubrick directed Lolita (1962). The graffiti on the second bomb is "Dear John" in the movie.
  • Major Kong's comment about the survival kit ("a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff") originally referred to Dallas instead of Las Vegas, but was overdubbed after President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas in November, 1963.
  • Kubrick intended the film to end with a custard pie fight between the Russians and the Americans in the War Room (which is why we see a big table of food there). The footage was shot, but he decided not to use it because he considered it too farcical to fit in with the satirical nature of the rest of the film.
  • Another reason for cutting the custard pie fight at the end of the film was that at one point, President Muffley took a pie in the face and fell down, prompting Gen. Turgidson to cry, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has just been struck down in his prime!" Kubrick had already decided to cut the pie fight before the Kennedy assassination, but this line (or possibly even the whole sequence) would certainly have been cut due to its eerie similarity to real events.
  • When Strangelove is talking about the doomsday device, Turgidson says, "Strangelove. What is that, German?" The reply he receives is "He changed his name; it was originally Merkwurdigliebe" - which in German means "Strangelove."
  • Features what was George C. Scott's own favorite performance.
  • Some references show the date of this film as 1963. Its world premiere was scheduled for December 12, 1963, but following John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, it was felt to be inappropriate to release such a film so soon afterwards, so it was not shown until January 1964.
  • The end sequence, in which Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" is played over several shots of nuclear explosions, was suggested by Peter Sellers' fellow ex-Goon, Spike Milligan.
  • The centerfold in Major "King" Kong's copy of Playboy is Gen. Turgidson's secretary, Miss Scott.
  • Strangelove apparently suffers from "alien hand syndrome" an actual affliction that can be caused by a stroke or other brain injury causing damage to the nerve fibers that connect the two brain hemispheres (the corpus callosum). Researchers at the University of Aberdeen who identified it named it "Dr. Strangelove Syndrome." According to Professor Sergio Della Sala, "The patients are exactly like Peter Sellers. They come out and they slam their hand and shout 'My hand does things that I don't want to do!'"
  • Based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George, and originally conceived as a tense thriller about the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Director Stanley Kubrick was working on the script when he realized that many scenes he had written were actually quite funny. He then brought in Terry Southern to turn the story into a satire. Among the changes were the addition of the title character and the renaming of other characters using satirical names such as Turgidson, Kissoff, Guano, DeSadesky, and Merkin Muffley.
  • The dictionary definition of "Merkin" (the president's first name) is "a pubic wig".
  • The ending in the novel was more like that of the novel and movie Fail-Safe (1964). Author Peter George detested the conversion of his book to a satire, but consented to write a tie-in novelization of the film anyway.
  • In an original script draft, Dr. Strangelove is referred to as "Von Klutz".
  • This film was the debut for James Earl Jones.
  • Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [three-way] USA vs. Russia vs. General Ripper.
  • Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [faces] General Turgidson, General Ripper, and Dr. Strangelove.
  • The character of Dr. Strangelove is a composite. He is based on, among others, Henry Kissinger (German-born political historian, nuclear strategist and later part of Nixon's cabinet), Werner von Braun (a Nazi scientist who developed the V1 and V2 rockets and was later given amnesty by the US to help with early space rocket programs), physicist Edward Teller (father of the American hydrogen bomb) and Herman Kahn (nuclear war theoretician, whose book On Nuclear War was read several times by Kubrick). On the other hand, Turgidson is more directly based on General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay.
  • Director Trademark: [Stanley Kubrick] [114] Name of the message decoder "CRM-114".
  • Terry Southern was brought in as co-writer by Peter Sellers because Sellers was a big fan of Southern's novel The Magic Christian. Five years later Sellers starred in the film version of The Magic Christian (1969).
  • The glove worn by Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove came from director Kubrick's personal collection. Sellers had seen Kubrick wearing them to handle hot lights on the set and thought of them as sinister-looking, so he wore one of them on his right hand (the one not under his control) to add to Strangelove's eeriness.
  • The stock footage shown in the opening credits (a suggestive image of refueling military aircraft) was also used in Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964).
  • Originally planned to be shot in the United States, filming had to take place at England's Shepperton Studio since Sellers had to stay in England for the duration of the shoot.
  • The Playboy magazine that Slim Pickens is reading in the B-52 is the June 1962 issue.