Trivia / Top Gun

• Awesome, Dear Boy: The Naval Aviators who did the actual flying for the film were all excited to be picked because it meant getting to pull stunts that would have otherwise cost them their jobs and even could have resulted in criminal charges being brought against them.^note For example, buzzing the tower in real life is a career ender. For the film, it's an awesome maneuver that Scott Altman got to do nine times. It certainly wasn't for the money, since they only received an extra $23 a day for their contributions.
• Backed by the Pentagon: The US Navy backed this film in hopes of boosting recruiting numbers. The film was so successful in doing this that the Navy began setting up recruitment booths right outside theaters so that enthusiastic viewers could sign up immediately.
• California Doubling: Some of the scenes on the interior of the USS Enterprise were filmed on the older USS Ranger, with some of the flight deck scenes filmed on the USS Carl Vinson. Ranger would go on to stand-in again for the Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Cast the Expert: Real-life American fighter pilots (wearing darkened visors) played enemy MiG pilots.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub done for the Fuji TV network, Maverick was voiced by the late TV and movie actor Hiroyuki Watanabe, who some toku fans will recognize as Taiga Saejima in GARO, Gaoh in Kamen Rider Den-O and Freddie in the live-action version of Cromartie High School.
• Colbert Bump: Top Gun sparked a 500% increase in recruitments to the US Navy.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Val Kilmer didn't want to be in the movie at first, but was forced to by contractual obligations. He came to appreciate the role, and even campaigned to appear in Top Gun: Maverick.
• Deleted Scene: The film was originally going to have a scene near the end where Maverick visited Goose's grave. A filmed version of this scene was never released, however stills of what such a scene would have looked like are available on the special edition DVD.
• Directed by Cast Member: This happens in both Latin American Spanish dubs. The first dub was directed by Javier Ponton, who voiced Maverick, while the second one was directed by José Antonio Macías, who voiced Goose.
• Dueling Dubs: The movie has two Latin American Spanish dubs. The orignal dub was made at Intersound in Los Angeles in 1986, while the redub was made in Mexico at SDI Media de Mexico in 2007.
• Dueling Movies: With Iron Eagle, which was produced at the same time. Top Gun was far more successful, but Iron Eagle got three sequels, the last going Direct to Video, decades before the other movie's own follow-up.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Tom Cruise insisted that he get to fly in a real F-14 as a condition of starring in the movie^note This was almost entirely for his own pleasure as they could only get around six minutes of footage per flight due to film limitations. They'd run out the film canister as soon as possible and spend the rest of the flight having fun. Plus, most of the in-cockpit footage was unusable and what little that was properly exposed was almost all discarded because so much of the cast couldn't hide their nausea even behind their masks. The Navy paired Cruise with a pilot named "Bozo" who made it his personal mission to make sure that Cruise puked on every flight. Cruise frequently tells the story of how, after a particularly hard maneuver, he bent down to vomit into a bag when Bozo threw the plane into a climb so fast that his head was pinned to the cockpit floor by the g-forces.
  Tom Cruise: I'm trying to key the radio and trying to say "Bozo! Bozo!" and he goes: "They don't call me 'Bozo' for nothing!"
  • The real-life aviators tried to get all of the actors to vomit, and were nearly successful; the only one unscathed was Anthony Edwards.
• Fatal Method Acting: Stunt pilot Art Scholl was killed when his Pitts S-2 camera plane failed to recover from a flat spin and plunged into the Pacific Ocean. Scholl's last words over the radio were "I have a problem — I have a real problem." The exact cause of the crash was never determined, and neither the aircraft nor Scholl's body were ever recovered. The film is dedicated to him.
• Follow the Leader:
  • This movie was the leader for Fire Birds, which had a similar premise, but centered on attack helicopters, made with the assistance of the Arizona National Guard. Like Iron Eagle, it wasn't as successful. Unlike Iron Eagle, it spawned no sequels.
  • It also inspired the short-lived TV series Supercarrier and the long-running TV series JAG, as well as multiple air-combat video games.
  • The movie Navy Seals (1990) with Charlie Sheen was requested by the Navy, who hoped it would provide a bump in enlistment the way Top Gun did. It didn't.
  • The Navy also fully supported the production of The Hunt for Red October, as they thought it would do for the submarine service what Top Gun did for Navy aviation.
• Gay Panic: The studio forced Tony Scott to shoot additional scenes, including a love scene, between Maverick and Charlie to try and counteract the copious amounts of homoerotic subtext that permeated the rest of the movie. The chemistry between the male actors still ended up being more memorable.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • A downplayed version with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, who, due to Enforced Method Acting, weren't made to interact with each other at all, so the tension between their characters is the real deal. That said, Kilmer denied on his Reddit page that outside of that there was any actual tension.
    He was a sweet heart. We were all quite rowdy me and all the real flyboys and the actors, so I actually felt a little sorry for him cause we all had time to play and date the cute extras and zoom around San Diego in muscle cars, but Tom was always in some scene and never go to play with us...
  • Neither actor was particularly popular with the Navy pilots who flew them around.
  • While the cast was filming on the aircraft carrier, Rick Rossovich (Slider) expressed concern about berthing too close to the ship's nuclear reactors. He ended up getting into a heated argument with the captain, who in turn kicked him off the ship.
• In Memoriam: The film is dedicated to the memory of longtime Hollywood stunt pilot Art Scholl, who died during the filming of some sequences from civilian aircraft when a biplane he was flying crashed off the Pacific Coast.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: There has never been an official release of Harold Faltermeyer's full score for the film. Two pieces of the score appear on the current soundtrack album, but the complete score has yet to be released.
• Life Imitates Art: The F-5s "playing" the part of MiG-28s in flat black paint jobs were planes from the actual seminar. They kept the paint job after filming was done.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis are rumoured to have hated each other on set. This has never been directly confirmed in any interview, and McGillis (not one for withholding her opinion) has spoken fondly about Cruise in recent interviews, saying she enjoyed working with him.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: When Kelly McGillis was called back for reshoots, she'd dyed her hair brown for Made In Heaven. Note that she wears a baseball cap in the elevator scene.
• Reality Subtext: The tension between Maverick and Iceman isn't just down to good acting. Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer really disliked each other and wouldn't socialise or interact with one another. Like their characters, however, they became friends later, and Cruise insisted that Kilmer be hired for the sequel, flat-out telling the producers that he wouldn't do the film unless Kilmer was brought in.
• The Red Stapler:
  • Jackets and Ray-Bans like the ones in the film experienced a peak in sales after the movie came out.
  • The Navy started putting recruitment booths in the theaters showing the film, as enlistments saw a 500% bump. Unfortunately, everyone coming to the recruiting booth after seeing the movie wanted to be a fighter pilot, and many were extremely disappointed to find out they didn't qualify, either for physical reasons (vision problems, etc.) or because they didn't have a college degree. The reason enlistments saw a 500% bump despite this is because the Navy recruiters did a masterful job of redirecting the majority of them into other career fields.
• Romance on the Set: Meg Ryan and Anthony Edwards actually became an item after filming concluded.
• Scully Box: Tom Cruise had to wear lifts in his scenes with Kelly McGillis. Cruise is 5'7", while McGillis is 5'10".
• Spared by the Cut: Cougar was supposed to have crashed while trying to land back on the carrier, and his death was supposed to be why Maverick "slid into Cougar's spot", but this version was cut by the Navy. As the movie was intended to be a recruitment tool for the Navy, they didn't want attention drawn to a particularly hazardous aspect of serving on a carrier or flying fighter jets.
• Shown Their Work: The MiG-28s are F-5 Tigers, which the real Top Gun used as aggressors to simulate dogfights against a MiG-21 FISHBED, which is the airplane being targeted in the official Top Gun patch.
• Throw It In!:
  • Iceman biting his gum and snapping his jaw at the end of the locker room scene was not scripted. Val Kilmer just did it, effectively getting the final word over Tom Cruise.
  • When the students are being briefed by Charlie in the hanger, Maverick explains that he gave "the bird" to a MiG. She asks how he saw the MiG up close, and he says he was flying inverted. Kilmer ad-libbed the "bullshit" cough, which got the other actors to start laughing.
• Uncredited Role: Warren Skaaren and Chip Proser did uncredited rewrites on the screenplay.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Soundtrack-related:
    • Bryan Adams was approached to use his song, "Only the Strong Survive," but he refused since he felt that the film glorified war.
    • Kenny Loggins was not the first choice to record the song "Danger Zone" for the film. Starship, Toto, and REO Speedwagon were all considered prior to Loggins. But Starship pulled out, the film's producers got in legal hot water with Toto, and REO lead singer Kevin Cronin felt he couldn't hit the higher notes in the song. Corey Hart was also approched, but didn't want to sing a song he didn't write himself.
    • Judas Priest was approached to use "Reckless" as the end credits song. The band believed the movie would be a flop and turned down the request, so "Danger Zone" became its replacement. Rob Halford regrets this decision heavily, having said that while watching the movie in theaters the movie was much better than he expected and that their decision had cost them one of the biggest opportunities of their career.
    • Just before the film started production, one of the producers announced that they wanted to use the Bruce Springsteen song "Born in the USA", but attempts to secure the song were unsuccessful. Just as well, given that the song wasn't meant to be patriotic.
  • Maverick's first real name was "Evan", but it was changed to Pete as a homage to Pete Pettigrew, who worked on the movie.
  • Goose's death scene was originally supposed to have him perish in a flaming crash aboard an aircraft carrier but the Navy objected and the training accident was used instead.
  • Matthew Modine turned down the role of Maverick because he objected to the film's Cold War politics. Kevin Bacon, Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, John Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Emilio Estevez, Matthew Broderick, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, Sean Penn, Eric Stoltz and Patrick Swayze all turned it down. Rob Lowe and Ralph Macchio were also considered. Charlie Sheen (who was deemed too young for the role) would later go on to spoof the role in Hot Shots!. John Travolta was rejected for being deemed box-office poison.
  • Ally Sheedy was offered the role of Charlie, but turned it down, because she didn't think anyone would want to see a movie about fighter planes. Jodie Foster, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Diane Lane, Tatum O'Neal and Sarah Jessica Parker all turned down the role. Carrie Fisher, Brooke Shields, Julianne Philips and Demi Moore were also considered for the role, with Philips going so far as to having been scheduled to perform a screen test opposite Tom Cruise, while Moore also tested for the role.
  • Both John Carpenter and David Cronenberg turned down the chance to direct.
  • Jon Voight was considered for Viper.
  • Mickey Rourke turned down a role.
  • Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood's character metamorphosed out of a character called Kirsten Lindstrom. She was originally a classic bimbo. Dawn Steel, then head of Paramount Pictures, allegedly refused to authorise the project until she was made into a more real, intelligent woman.
  • Most of the footage of the cast in flight was going to be being filmed in real F-14s flying high-g maneuvers. But after a week, Tony Scott put an end to this costly technique^note it was costing the production $7600 an hour because everyone looked too nauseous and sickly, and shot most of the cockpit sequences on the ground.
  • The film was shot in the Super 35 format, as anamorphic lenses were too large to fit inside the cockpits of the fighter jets, and the cameras would fall off their mounts when the fighter jets maneuvered on their sides.

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