Trivia / Rambo: Last Blood

• Dawson Casting: 18-year-old Gabriela is played by Yvette Monreal, who was 26 at the time of filming.
• Deleted Scene: Some versions of the film included an alternate opening scene where Rambo saves two people from a storm.
• Disowned Adaptation: In the polar opposite reaction he had to the previous installment, First Blood author David Morrell disliked the film, calling it a "mess" and was embarrassed to have his name attached to it.
• Dueling Works: The film comes out two months before Terminator: Dark Fate, another gritty and R-rated installment from an action movie franchise that originated in The '80s and starring the other major action movie star from that time, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both also see the return of an aged protagonist of the franchise, John Rambo (Stallone again) and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who stills kicks ass left and right.
• Fake Nationality: Spaniards Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Hugo), Óscar Jaenada (Víctor) and Paz Vega (Carmen) all play Mexican characters.
• Follow the Leader: Some reviewers, including Chris Stuckmann, felt that the movie felt more like a Taken knock off than a Rambo film.
• Money, Dear Boy: Peris-Mencheta thought nothing of his part in this film except as a check to pay for his theater production.
• Refitted for Sequel: The plot to this movie was intended for the fourth film but changed.
• Saved from Development Hell: Stallone wrote the script right after the fourth film back in 2008-2009. The project was put on hold after the success of The Expendables in order to focus on the sequels for that franchise, before being eventually revived a decade later.
• Sequel Gap: It comes out eleven years after Rambo.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film went through many rewrites during its Development Hell, before reverting back to the drug cartel plot. At one point, it was called Rambo V: The Last Hunt and its plot was eerily similar to Predator with Rambo going after a dangerous creature that hunts humans in the jungle (although genetically engineered rather than alien).
    • A variation of that monster movie is coming, sans Rambo.
  • In earlier drafts of the script, Gabriela and Carmen's younger sister were the same person, and Gabriela had been kidnapped to deter Carmen from reporting on the cartels. The finished film split them off to separate characters, and both were abducted for use as Sex Slaves, with no intention of keeping Carmen quiet.
  • The very ending shot of the movie originally had Rambo's rocking chair stop moving as the camera pulled away, implying The Hero Dies. In the documentary Sly, he revealed he added CGI so as to make it look as if he was still alive, due to the fact that Stallone hated downer endings.

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