Is President Muffley a pushover weakling or a compassionate man with regular bouts of competence who maintains a tremendous amount of composure despite being dealt a terribly bad hand? He flip-flops regarding goofiness and firmness. We laugh at how the situation gets horribly out of control in his hands, but how many would be able to solve it?
Is Ripper a closeted gay man struggling with sexual repression? He has a couple of unusual moments, like asserting his sexuality and affectionate attitude toward Mandrake
The Soviets developed a real-life "Doomsday Device" called the Dead Hand, albeit not until the '70s and '80s. One wonders if they drew inspiration from the movie.
Strategic Air Command's motto really was "Peace Is Our Profession."
USAF pilot survival kits really did contain such items as condoms and nylons.
The US military actually used "Operation Drop Kick" as a name. It revolved around biological warfare rather than nuclear.
Water fluoridation really was (and still is, in some quarters) the subject of conspiracy theories alleging that it was part of a Communist plot to poison Americans; it was already falling out of influence by the film's release, but said theories were the main reason why fluoridated water wasn't used by the majority of the US population until the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Anvilicious: Atomic weapons and the policies surrounding their use, especially mutually assured destruction and the missile gap, are absurd and dangerous.
The film received four Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (three nominations for Stanley Kubrick) and Best Actor (Peter Sellers). It failed to win any of these, despite being widely held to be one of the greatest movies of all time (especially in terms of script and direction).
The War Room is near universally considered to be one of the best, if not the best, film sets of all time. Yet Ken Adam failed to receive even an Oscar nomination for its set design.
Crazy Is Cool: Ripper himself. Bonkers as he may be, one has to hand it to him how he delivers his bull in such a straight way. And then the man keeps a machine gun in his golf bag.
Crosses the Line Twice: A very dark comedy with plenty of examples, but Turgidson's joyful, infantile attitude on the brink of annihilation is particularly funny. Also works on a meta level on the part of Kubrick, as he chose to take Refuge in Audacity when he realized that the whole nuclear fracas was too absurd to be taken seriously and changed the tone of the movie from drama to satire.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The movie has a strong anti-war, anti-military message... but the scenes of Major Kong and his bomber crew are pure awesome. SAC crews (that is, people who fly bombers) were some of the biggest fans of the movie. The way you're sort-of rooting for Kong and his crew, even though the completion of their mission would mean the end of the world, is actually neatly summed up by the film itself by Turgidson in a mood-swinging scene.
Jack D. Ripper is still a memorable character considering some of his theories about the Russians weren't too far off and he's Crazy-Prepared for just about any situation thrown at him. Plus there's also the fact the he keeps a gun his golf bag and that he's willing to shoot himself if it means keeping his plans secret.
Genius Bonus: Mandrake's last name; a common folkloric belief is that mandrakes grow only in ground into which has soaked the semen that is sometimes forced from the bodies of men hanged to death. Mandrake's role plays off General Ripper, who is strongly implied to have been driven insane by misconceptions about sex, and who is ultimately, as is mentioned in a throw-away line, the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler — what's more, Mandrake "blooms" as a person, taking authority to try and stop the impending catastrophe, after he unintentionally goads Ripper into shooting himself.
The "Dead Hand" is the real-life counterpart of the doomsday machine, developed during the Cold War just a few years after the movie, with claims that it's still in operation as recent as November 2015. Sleep tight though, it's only semi-automatic. They allegedly drew up blueprints for an automatic one, looked at them, and figured "no."
The logic behind it is actually less insane than at first sight. The device is supposed to protect against hasty decisions and false-alarms. The idea is that it only gets switched on during moments of diplomatic crisis and heightened tension - which means the Soviet (and later Russian) leadership doesn't need to keep their finger on the trigger every second with tension building up, they can trust that even if they mistake a real first strike for a false alarm they will still have retaliatory capability.
The movie becomes less funny when you learn that Russians generals in 1983 nearly fired nukes at the US after an error in the Soviet Union detection system and it was Stanislav Petrov following his instincts that prevented nuclear war. Then in 2002, we learned that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet Premier Khrushchev had secretly authorized a flotilla of attack submarines equipped with nuclear-tipped torpedoes to fire at their captains' discretion, without seeking authorization from Moscow. When one of those subs was trapped by US destroyers, only the flat refusal of flotilla commander Vasily Arkhipov to authorize the captain to fire prevented a probable nuclear war.
The fact that North Korea, a nation run by a howling-mad dictator, has access to nuclear weapons proves the danger of maniacs gaining control over them hasn't gone away.
The Soviet ambassador justified the Doomsday Device by saying his country couldn't afford the arms race and the people wanted more consumer goods. Almost 30 years after the movie's release, the Soviet Union collapsed partly because they couldn't afford the arms race and the people couldn't access consumer goodsnote Ironically, this would be also be partly due to a nuclear disaster; though it was of their own making.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The movie ends with the Cold War escalating into an apocalyptic war. However, in the 1980s and 90s, the two superpowers peacefully ended the Cold War and disarmed a lot of their nukes. While the threat of nuclear annihilation hasn't completely gone away, the nuclear treaties proved humanity had more common sense and restraint than the movie assumed it would have.
Ho Yay: Ripper gets a brief moment with Mandrake where he puts his arm around him, and speaks in a father-like manner to him.
It Was His Sled: The whole film is about everyone trying to prevent the US bombers from successfully dropping a bomb and triggering the doomsday machine, but Major Kong riding the falling bomb has since become the signature scene of the movie in addition to one of the most iconic moments in all of cinema.
Jerkass Woobie: Turgidson. In most of the movie, he acts like a bombastic buffoon, until his shock when he realize the world may end.
General Turgidson listening to the phone conversation has become a common GIF on forums and message boards for people observing a flame war. Additionally, the phone conversation itself has some highly memetic quotes.
And of course the trope-making Riding the Bomb from the climax.
Misaimed Fandom: On YouTube there are quite a few people who take General Ripper's speeches at face value, especially concerning conspiracies around water fluoridation.
It gets worse if you study the history of the Cold War and see how close we came to war entirely by accident multiple times, particularly due to malfunctions in the early warning systems used by both sides (think the plot of WarGames, but with the humans still actually in direct control of the arsenal).
Playing Against Type: George C. Scott is mostly known for straight laced gruff no-nonsense types. His buffoonish over-the-top portrayal as General Buck Turgidson would seem very off to anyone who knows him best for Patton
Protagonist Title Fallacy: Strangelove is on the U.S. side and doesn't betray them, but he's hardly heroic, and doesn't play a big role, only actually doing anything in about 2 scenes.
General Ripper's unhinged ranting about "Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurity all of our precious bodily fluids!"
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
"Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!"
Signature Scene: Major Kong riding the bomb is not only easily the most iconic scene in the film, it's one of the most famous shots in the history of movies. It's parodied often enough that even people who've never heard of the movie might recognize it.
Slow-Paced Beginning: The film is fairly pedestrian and slow-paced for the first fifteen-to-twenty minutes, with a couple of good lines, until the viewers get to The War Room and suddenly it becomes hilarious, and stays that way for the rest of the film.
Strawman Has a Point: General Turgidson, the trigger-happy military advisor, has one in broad, though a number of his individual lines are silly. As the film reveals, the Soviets really do have a doomsday bomb that can depopulate the entire world, which they may use at any time and by their own admission will not (and possibly even cannot) decommission under any circumstances, and the Soviet Premier sounds like an unstable fellow at best in what we hear of his talks with the President on the hot line. Under those conditions, a preemptive nuclear strike to take out as much of the Soviet nuclear infrastructure as possible before they can launch a doomsday attack makes a certain kind of grim sense, even if the consequences of even a partial nuclear war will still be horrifying. Basically, the dilemma is the same as in the real life Cold War, but with the important additions that 1) the Soviet leaders really are irresponsible madmen who cannot be trusted, and 2) their capacity for destruction is infinitely greater than in the real 1964 (when their nuclear arsenal would still have killed untold millions if used, but not destroyed all mankind). In this extreme situation, horrible as it sounds, many a strategist would agree that Turgidson is actually making a better argument than the President, who for his part is desperately trying to de-escalate the situation.
Tear Jerker: Despite the darkly comedic presence, there are a few moments of genuine pathos.
The otherwise bombastic General Turgidson's horror when he realizes the bomber can succeed in reaching its target, meaning the Doomsday Bomb will be activated, is one of the few moments where he's genuinely shaken and terrified.
Major Kong and his crew, a mostly close-knit and dedicated bunch, have been tricked into causing nuclear annihilation.
Unintentional Period Piece: While the anti-war message still holds up, the references to communism, the Soviet Union, and the technology date the film to the 1960s.
However it very much is an intentional period piece. Remember that this movie came out just two years after the Cuban missile crisis, and less than a year after JFK was assassinated. To say that making a black comedy about something that was so terrifying to so many people at the time was a gutsy move on Stanley Kubrick‘s part is a massive understatement
Like many Cold War films, especially ones with such nuclear heavy themes, it was hard for young audiences who grew up after the fall of the Soviet Union to appreciate it. After the North Korean and Ukrainian crises, many will find this film just as relevant today as it was then, as the idea of "our politicians are aggressive idiots, but still have the power to end the world" will likely be a popular sentiment for years to come.
The film's themes of conflict driven by sexual frustration and paranoia have become more relevant than ever with the rise of "incel" culture and the mainstreaming of copious conspiracy theories.
, albeit not until the '70s and '80s. One wonders if they drew inspiration from the movie.