The art on the film's videocassette packaging appears to have been plagiarized from promotional artwork for Mad Max (1979).
In a scene near the beginning of the film, Coldyron presents a film about R.O.T.O.R to fellow "police scientists" from Los Angeles. The characters introduce themselves, state their alma mater and then question Coldyron about the robot's features. Each universities' name is a reference to The Beach Boys (Wilson Institute, Jardine University at Malibu, etc.). They then awkwardly insert the phrases "Good vibrations," "I get around," "God only knows" and "Heroes and Villains" into their questions. These are all names of songs by The Beach Boys.
Screenwriter Budd Lewis disowned the film after its release, blaming director Cullen Blaine and lead star Richard Gesswein for rewriting his original screenplay, eliminating most of the humor and inserting several extraneous scenes in order to replace parts of Lewis' screenplay that were deemed too expensive to film.
R.O.T.O.R. is portrayed as a Dallas Police Department project to create "the future of law enforcement." In an ironic turn of events, Dallas police would become the first U.S. law enforcement agency to use a robot to kill a suspect, when a bomb-carrying robot was used on July 8, 2016 to end a standoff with the heavily armed suspect following the shooting of several Dallas police officers at a protest march.