Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing only if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. In their eyes, Sellers playing multiple roles was one reason Lolita was so successful.
Depite the editing and cross-cutting, Peter Bull, playing Soviet Ambassador de Sadesky, is glimpsed trying to keep himself from cracking up in the scene where Dr. Strangelove's mechanical arm and hand are moving out of control.
Director Trademark (Stanley Kubrick): bathroom: General Turgidson is in the bathroom when first summoned to the War Room, Later, General Ripper commits suicide in a bathroom.
Dr. Strangelove apparently suffers from agonistic apraxia, also known as "alien hand syndrome". It's caused by damage to the corpus collosum, the nerve fibers that connect the brain's two hemispheres. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen who identified it named it Dr. Strangelove Syndrome. According to Professor Sergio Della Sala, the patients "slam their hand and shout 'My hand does things that I don't want it to do!'"
Dr. Strangelove's glove is from Stanley Kubrick's personal collection. Peter Sellers had seen Kubrick wearing them to handle hot lights on the set, and thought they looked sinister. He wore one on his right hand (the one not under his control) to add to Strangelove's eeriness.
During the deleted pie-fight scene, President Muffley took a pie in the face and fell down, prompting General Turgidson to cry, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has just been struck down in his prime!" Stanley Kubrick had already decided to cut the pie fight by the time President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but the line (or possibly whole sequence) likely would have been cut anyway due to its eerie similarity to real events.
Early titles for the project were "The Edge of Doom" and "The Delicate Balance of Terror".
For the role of Gen. Jack D. Ripper, Stanley Kubrick was able to talk Sterling Hayden into coming out of retirement to make his first film in five years. Kubrick had previously used Hayden in The Killing.
Gen. Ripper's paranoia about water fluoridation being a Communist plot is based on a conspiracy theory circulated by the extreme-right-wing John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s. The organization, which was founded in 1958, was quite influential in conservative politics at the time, and the "fluoridation is a Communist plot" theory took hold in many rural areas of the US, with some small towns going as far as to not only ban fluoridation of water but to pass ordinances requiring the arrest and jailing of anyone who advocated it.
General Turgidson (George C. Scott) is a veteran of both WWII and Korea; wearing the Army Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart, among numerous campaign medals.
Has the longest title for a Best Picture nominee or winner, at 13 words long.
In Terry Southern's script, Muffley has a bad cold. Peter Sellers played this up so hilariously that the cast kept cracking up during filming. Stanley Kubrick decided to make him a foil for everyone else's craziness instead, and re-shot the scenes with Sellers now playing the role straight.
In addition to the 100 megaton bomb citation there are other oblique references to the Soviets' "Tsar Bomba" project in regards to the Doomsday Machine: The Ambassador laments his citizens' wanting, among other things, "more nylons" and the political difficulty this presented to defense spending. It is alleged that construction of the retardation parachute for the tested bomb's air drop disrupted the Soviet hosiery industry for months in order to secure enough material. Dr. Strangelove says "When you only wish to bury bombs there is no limit to the size". The manufactured test bomb was so large and heavy that no early 1960s vintage strategic bomber was capable of carrying it without substantial modifications impacting speed, range and radar-eluding capabilities. Its utility as a strategic weapon was therefore so severely limited as to render it negligible. Announcement of the Doomsday Machine was supposed to be announced at a coming party conference because "the Premier loves surprises". The Tsar Bomba test took place during what was supposed to be a several year nuclear test suspension between the US and USSR.
In an original script draft, Dr. Strangelove is referred to as Von Klutz.
In one version of the script, aliens from outer space observed all of the action.
In the early 60s, the B-52 was cutting-edge technology. Access to it was a matter of national security. The Pentagon refused to lend any support to the film after they read the script. Set designers reconstructed the B-52 bomber's cockpit from a single photograph that appeared in a British flying magazine. When some American Air Force personnel were invited to view the movie's B52 cockpit, they said it was a perfect copy. Stanley Kubrick feared that Ken Adam's production design team had used illegal methods and could be investigated by the FBI.
In the novel by Peter George the two H-bombs are named Hi There! and Lolita. Two years earlier, Stanley Kubrick directed Lolita. The graffiti on the second bomb is Dear John in the movie.
In the War Room scenes, General Turgidsen and the Air Force general officer seated next to him both wear wings of the lowest Air Force aeronautical rating ("pilot"). Although it is possible nowadays, in the era in which the film was made it is highly unlikely that a senior Air Force general officer (and the apparent Air Force Chief of Staff) would have any aeronautical rating lower than "command pilot" (wings with a star and a wreath), which required 15 years as a rated pilot and a minimum of 3,000 flight hours.
Initially, the President was played in a slightly effeminate manner. Those scenes were later re-shot to make him seem like an oasis of reason amidst all the madness.
Major Kong's comment about the survival kit was originally "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff". "Dallas" was overdubbed with "Vegas" after President John F. Kennedy was assassination in Dallas. Kong still mouths the word "Dallas".