10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Robocop

10. The “elevator pitch” for the movie was “futuristic Lone Ranger.” And in fact, the movie mirrors the western legend throughout. The lawman gunned down by bandits and left for dead, only to return as a mysterious masked force of vengeance? Even Murphy’s iconic gun twirl was meant to be a reference to the Old West hero. 

9. The original cut of the movie earned an X rating. Had it not been clipped a little to eventually score an R, it would have been a rare example of an X rating given to a film simply for gore (the offending scenes, including longer versions of Murphy’s dismemberment and ED-209 ripping the boardroom lackey to shreds with bullets, were restored on the DVD.)

8. When a bullet-ridden Murphy is rushed through the emergency room, Verhoeven used an actual hospital trauma team and let them ad-lib all of their dialogue. So you’re seeing, essentially, how they actually would react if faced with someone in Murphy’s condition. 

7. Bald and bespectacled Kurtwood Smith thought he was auditioning for the role of corporate sleazeball Dick Jones (played by Ronny Cox in the movie), but Verhoeven liked him for murderous crime lord Clarence Boddicker because he felt the glasses made him look like Heinrich Himmler. 

6. Watch closely during the scene where RoboCop accesses the police database searching for ginger baddie Emil’s face. Among the mugshots that flash by are pictures of the cast and crew, including Verhoeven.

5. Mood ruiner: During any scene showing RoboCop sitting in the police car, Peter Weller was in his underwear. The suit was too bulky for him to sit down or fit into the police cruiser, so he only wore the top half and skivvies.

4. The first guy that RoboCop busts -- the machine gun-wielding maniac in the convenience store -- snags an “Iron Man” comic book off the shelf and slaps it on the counter before holding the place up. This was a deliberate nod placed in by Verhoeven, who also prominently placed “ROM: Space Knight” comics on the shelf. Iron Man is a man with a robotic suit that saves his life, and ROM is a human brain transplanted into a robot body. 

3. The ending is classic -- “Nice shootin’, son. What’s your name?” “Murphy” -- but it wasn’t always planned that way. Verhoeven shot an entire coda sequence showing the arrest of sleazy comedy-show host, Bixby “I’d buy that for a dollar!” Snyder, as well as a shot of Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) recovering in the hospital. Because he cut the “alive and well” Lewis scene, rumors started sprouting that Verhoeven was planning to introduce Lewis as a female RoboCop in the sequel. 

2. The very first sequence shot was the scene in which RoboCop catches the car keys on his way out of the police station. It’s about 10 seconds of screen time but took a whopping 13 hours to shoot. Why? 11 hours were spent getting Weller into the suit for the first time, and another two were spent trying to actually film the scene because the keys kept bouncing off of the costume’s rubber hands. Since this was day one, the production company, Orion, considered pulling the plug.