Awesome, Dear Boy: Part of the reason why Paul Verhoeven did the first film. He initially rejected the opportunity to direct it when he read the script and thought it was silly and stupid. He changed his mind when his wife convinced him that there were more layers to the story than he initially thought, and because the writers pointed out the amount of Gorn there was, to which he responded "Well, I've never seen the hero get his hand blown off!"
Speaking of Christopher Henderson, what's Graem Bauer doing killing him?
Dick Jones is Senator Robert Kinsey, Admiral Aken BoschandCohaagen. There's just something about Ronny Cox's screen persona that lends itself perfectly to "corrupt high-ranking jackass." He was in fact Playing Against Type at the time — he had normally played morally upright characters up to that point.
OCP in the third movie was ran by Zed and he answered to OCP's new owner, Aku. Oh, and Cain, the drug-addicted (and making) cult leader in the second movie, was the original Francis Dolarhyde.
Now why would Leland Palmer be so silly as to try and kick Robocop in the crotch?
He probably didn't know that Albert Rosenfeld's design team gave Robocop balls of steel.
Lionel Luthor seems to have gotten his start pitching lethal car theft deterrent devices.
Back when he had a full head of hair, Dr. Garret Macy designed RoboCop!
And on that note, Jordan Cavanaugh herself (alternatively, Claire Kincaid) was Marie Lazarus, the scientist who was friends with Robo in the third movie.
Hob, Cain's child henchman in the second movie, is played by Littlefoot.
Mario Machado and Leeza Gibbons were the newsanchors in the first two movies. Machado reprised his role in Robocop 3, but his co-anchor was Natalia Boa Vista, who couldn't wait to go back to the Crime Lab.
Shout Out: The Show Within a ShowI'd Buy That for a Dollar is a homage to the idiot's TV-derived catchphrase from the dystopic SF novel The Marching Morons, updated for inflation. Originally: "I'd buy that for a quarter!" *
The star of the show, Bixby Snyder, is possibly a homage to Benny Hill. Or a parody. In a supposedly-filmed scene, there's one final newscast where the newsreaders announce that Snyder has been arrested for receiving sexual favours from underaged co-stars.
In 2, Caine is overseeing the development of new versions of nuke, one of which is named Blue Velvet, likely after the song. But just maybe because the chemist working on it is named Frank.
RoboCop was supposed to stop the rapist holding his target as a shield with a precision headshot. When staging the scene, they saw how perfectly a bullet could fly through the woman's dress...
The politician being thrown to the ground was supposed to be just out of sight. The dummy they used for the scene had its legs kick up comically when it landed and was visible to the cameras. It looked too funny to leave out.
The original animated series had an unexpected nod to Murphy's death, with a flashback to the very end of the scene, Boddicker's "Fun's over" and the final shot to Murphy's head, rendered in animation.
