Trivia / RoboCop 2

• B-Team Sequel: Paul Verhoeven didn't return for the sequel, as he was busy with Total Recall (1990) and producer Jon Davison was working on Dick Tracy. The film also had new writers and Leonard Rosenman replaced Basil Poledouris as composer.
• California Doubling: The first film had Dallas for Detroit. This one has Houston for Detroit.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Peter Weller criticized the script, saying it lacked the spine and the soul of the original. Weller tried to convince Frank Miller, Irvin Kershner and the film's producers that the third act needed a morality angle instead of being just a shoot 'em up. The producers felt the battle between Robocop and Cain was sufficient. This, along with the overly dark tone and how uncomfortable the Robocop suit was prompted him to not return for the third movie. However, he did enjoy the experience of making the film and liked working with Irvin Kershner.
  • Nancy Allen went on record in a Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival interview in July 2010, four months before Irvin Kershner's death, saying that she hated Kershner and hated working with him. "And you can tell him that, I don't care." She claimed that he threw out all the intelligence and humour in the script.
• Creator Killer: This was Irvin Kirshner's final film.
• The Danza: Frank Miller has a cameo as a drug lab tech named Frank. He's the guy Cain talks to about the new Blue Velvet brand of Nuke.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Robocop walking through police station locker room where he sees a naked police woman showering and, after looking at her for a few seconds, walks away.
  • Robocop's hallucination scene after he is dismantled by Cain's men, where he dreams of visiting his own grave.
  • A few scenes with Cain that helped further flesh out his character, including a scene where he and Angie visit Dr. Faxx to discuss robotics, thus planting the seed for the most likely candidate to donate to Robocop 2's construction. In the same deleted scene, Cain confronts a Robocop mock-up in the OCP's reception area.
  • A scene with Cain and Angie in some kind of meditation ritual involving the large crystal later seen in their hideout.
  • An extended scene where the store keeper who got robbed by the baseball team kids screams at Robocop for letting them get away, with Robocop grabbing him by the throat, saying a few words about the storekeeper's "harsh value judgment" then dropping him on the floor.
  • The story involving corrupt Officer Duffy was much more protracted in the film's initial cut, which included a much longer sequence where Duffy is tortured and killed onscreen as well as a running bit where other officers kept finding his severed body parts. The filmmakers knew these segments would have given the film an X rating and quickly rounded off the story to end with relatively little gore and no follow-up material.
  • During the shootout between Cain's gang and cops in the warehouse, there was originally a knife fight scene between Catzo (Cain's right hand man known as "Elvis Guy" amongst fans of the film) and Lewis which ended with Lewis killing him.
  • A scene where Robocop finds out that Cain is inside the Robocop 2 cyborg, interfacing with Dr. Faxx's computer and going through her files.
  • Just like with first movie, some scenes were cut down to avoid an X rating by MPAA. Although one workprint version is available that includes some of the deleted scenes, there was never any uncut version of the movie with all deleted scenes.
• Descended Creator: Craig Davies designed the stop-motion models for the failed Robocop 2 prototypes as well as RoboCain, and his rear-projected face adorned the "Stop or I'll shoot" prototype.
• Disowned Adaptation: Like the third film, Ed Neumeier confirms that he will produce a true sequel to the first movie.
• Fake American: Dr. Faxx is played by Australian Belinda Bauer. See also Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.
• Life Imitates Art:
  • The actress playing Dr. Faxx later went on to actually earn a doctorate in psychology.
  • The City of Detroit is depicted as being cash-strapped where OCP owns the entire metropolitan area - as life imitating art, the City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy on July 18, 2013 with an estimated $18 - $20 billion debt.
  • Sunblock that turns skin blue became real in the late '90s.
• Refitted for Sequel: As anyone familiar with Frank Miller's original script (including its comic book form, Frank Miller's RoboCop) will attest, it originally had elements that'd eventually appear in RoboCop 3, like the Rehabs, OCP going through with tearing down Detroit and forcing people out of their homes, Murphy being framed by the Rehabs for the death of one of his fellow officers^note Reed in the script/comic, Lewis in 3, the Christmas time setting, and even the scene where a villain barges into a donut shop only to be greeted by cops^{note (SPOILERS)} Though the context for that one was different; in 3, it was to introduce Lewis into the film; in the original script for 2, it was Lewis needing back up as she was pursued by the Rebahs after they'd killed Reed and went to cops who were on strike to back her up.
• Spared by the Cut: Before it was split into this movie and RoboCop 3, Frank Miller's original script saw the Rehabs kill Sgt. Reed to begin a plan to discredit Murphy. While that particular plot was dropped here, it was used for 3, only with Lewis, so Reed is able to survive both films. Likewise, the original script for 2 had Estevez (Wanda De Jesus's character and depicted as a white man in the comic) killed by the Rehabs, whereas she survived in the filmed version of 2 and didn't appear in 3.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Frank Miller's RoboCop comic is an adaptation of Frank Miller's original script for RoboCop 2, some unused ideas of which he recycled into RoboCop 3. The Drugs Are Bad and Japan Takes Over the World aspects of the second and third movies weren't Miller's idea. The Big Bad would have been pop psychologist Dr. Love, who ended up becoming Dr. Faxx; she was responsible for both the RoboCop 2 project and RoboCop's Political Overcorrectness directives. The brain used for RoboCop 2 was to have been Kong, a psychotic Shell-Shocked Veteran, and RoboCop 2 had a video screen for a face because Dr. Love uploads her personality into him and her face replaces Kong's on the screen.
  • Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, writers of the first film, presented a very rough outline called RoboCop: Corporate Wars. In this draft, RoboCop was to be shot and pulverized to metallic dust by a cannon in the very beginning. He would be resurrected 25 years later in an even more dystopian future, where he becomes a pawn in the struggle between an all-powerful corporation, the government and an impoverished population and even at one point having a love interest with a Neruobrain to humanize Robocop even more. The studio liked this idea, but the writers did not want to continue working on script due to personal interests associated with the writers strike. This script would have made Bixby Snyder (the "I'll buy that for a dollar" guy) the President of the United States.
  • One of the early shooting scripts written by Walon Green with input from Irvin Kershner contained elements that were missing from the finished movie. In this version, Cain was still called "Kong". He is very intelligent but also wildly delusional. He sees himself as a modern-day Jesus, and constantly recites religious texts (he even bluntly kills one of his henchmen who dares to disturb him during one of his prayers). Cain wants to kill RoboCop/Murphy because he sees the immortal RoboCop as an insult to God. Murphy's emotional struggle is much more fleshed out, and his partner Lewis is vital in helping him retaining his humanity. Murphy actually learns that OCP is trying to kill the Mayor, and immediately intervenes (but arrives too late, finding everyone dead but Hob). This version makes it much more clear that Dr. Faxx also wants to get rid of RoboCop/Murphy. She purposely feeds him bad data in the hope that it will cause him to break down, and even programs RoboCain to kill Murphy for her (RoboCain's original purpose is to protect the Delta City construction workers from angry citizens). This backfires when RoboCain eventually kills her after she tries to shut him down. The finale is also different: RoboCop and RoboCain are attacked by two ED-209s. RoboCain fights and destroys them both; RoboCop uses this distraction to grab the Nuke container, after which the scene ends like in the movie.
  • Earlier shooting drafts had much more fleshed out roles for Murphy's wife and Hob, the latter of whom was at one point Murphy's son.
  • Alan Moore was asked to write the script, but turned it down. Imagine what that would have been like...
  • The role played by Patricia Charbonneau was originally written as a man.

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