Trivia / Beverly Hills Cop II

• Blooper: Just before Taggart falls into the swimming pool at the house Axel squatted, the shades he were wearing in the previous shot suddenly disappear, and he also inexplicably sports a cigar in his mouth that wasn't there before.
• Corpsing: John Ashton is clearly trying to suppress his laughter during the Johnny Wishbone scene.
• Creator Backlash: In a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, Eddie Murphy said this about the film:
  Beverly Hills Cop II was probably the most successful mediocre picture in history. It made $250 million worldwide, and it was a half-assed movie. Cop II was basically a rehash of Cop I, but it wasn't as spontaneous and funny.
• Deleted Role: Tiny Lister originally had a role in the movie, and his name can still be found in the credits, but he was cut from the final film.
• Deleted Scene (also a Missing Trailer Scene): There was a deleted scene from the Shooting Club where Axel, Rosewood, and Taggart must carefully sneak past a hallway with several lasers covering it. Axel tells Taggart to blow cigar smoke across the floor to expose the lasers and the trio have to carefully straddle the lasers and sneak across the hallway to Dent's office. According to Tony Scott, this scene was deleted because it slowed the pacing of the movie too much and because it was "too far removed from reality" and it clashed with the overall tone of the movie. The deleted scene can be viewed in the DVD extras.
• Development Gag: Billy has posters for Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra in his apartment. Sylvester Stallone was originally going to star in the first film and wanted to make it a straight-up action film. Cobra was the result. Furthermore, Stallone was married to Brigitte Nielsen, who was in both Cobra and this film.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live costar Gilbert Gottfried makes a cameo as Dent's accountant Sidney Bernstein.
• Romance on the Set: Tony Scott and Brigitte Nielsen had an affair during filming.
• Throw It In!: In the scene at Billy's apartment where both Axel and Billy sing the theme to The Dating Game, the singing was improvised by Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold.
  • Much like the first film, a great deal of the comedy was improvised.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tony Scott wanted Hans Zimmer to score the second film but the studio insisted on a name composer and Harold Faltermeyer returned. Zimmer would go on to do a number of films for Scott and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.
  • Bronson Pinchot was slated to reprise his role of Serge. However, scheduling conflicts due to his work on Perfect Strangers rendered him unavailable.
  • An early draft written by Bud Shrake and Dan Jenkins involved Axel going undercover as a Beverly Hills rent-a-cop who helps Rosewood, Taggart, and Bogamil stop a corrupt security service operated by a Detroit hoodlum turned businessman. The script also called Chief Hubbard from the first film to return and for Axel to have a 20 something female partner/love interest named "Lucy".
  • The climax originally took place in Maxwell Dent's mansion. Presumably, they didn't want to redo the climax of the first film.
  • Paramount originally wanted to produce a TV series after the success of the first film but Eddie Murphy didn't want to go back to TV so a movie was made instead.
  • The film was originally going to be set in either Paris or London (hence the jewel thief theme), but Eddie Murphy was unwilling to film outside the U.S.
  • Dennis Hopper was offered the role of Maxwell Dent, but turned it down.
• Written By Castmember: Eddie Murphy co-wrote the story with Robert D. Wachs.

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