According to Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger was interested in playing the lead in this movie. Stallone admitted in an interview that once he heard that Schwarzenegger wanted to do the movie, he immediately called his agent and campaigned for the leading role. He found out much later that Schwarzenegger faked interest in order to trick him into doing the movie.
When Estelle Getty found out that the movie would involve guns, she said she would only do the movie if there were no guns. The producers lied, saying there would be no guns in the movie, to get her to sign on.
When Estelle Getty is showing pictures of her son to people on the plane, the black and white picture of a boy in a checkered shirt is Sylvester Stallone as a young boy. The same picture was used in Rocky (1976), and sits on Rocky's mirror.
Though she appears with red hair in the film, many posters depicted Estelle Getty with white hair, so that she was marketed resembling her popular character from Les craquantes (1985).