Trivia / The Delta Force

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Robert Forster named Menahem Golan as one of the best directors he's worked with.
• Blooper: After the plane sends the distress call, a montage of American offices in DC, including the White House, Pentagon, and Capitol Building are shown. While some are shown at nighttime, it is clearly daytime in the shot of the Pentagon.
• California Doubling:
  • Beirut, Greece, the US and Israel are all played by the last-named country.
  • Some of the second movie, which mostly takes place in a fictional South American country, was filmed in Tennessee.
• Dawson Casting: The 61-year-old Lee Marvin was regarded as too old for his character.
• Fake Nationality: Robert Forster as Abdul Rafai, the leader of the terrorist group.
• Hostility on the Set: Filming in the airplane was not pleasant for the actors and actresses, as temperatures in Israel reached over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit (thirty-eight degrees Celsius). Shelley Winters and Menahem Golan had several arguments over this. At one point she said, "I can't do this, I'll die". He replied, "Do it and then die."
• Playing Against Type: A behind-the-scenes example: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were executive producers of this film.
• Real-Life Relative: Chuck Norris' son, NASCAR driver Eric Norris, is seen as one of the U.S. Navy divers taken hostage.
• Swan Song: This happened to be Lee Marvin's final film before dying.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The role of Major McCoy was originally intended for Charles Bronson. Posters with him and Chuck Norris were made before the production started.
  • Shortly before director Menahem Golan died, he was in talks with a scriptwriter about a fourth Delta Force movie.
  • This was originally going to be a straightforward retelling of Operation Eagle Claw, But Cannon wanted a happy ending. Col. Charles Alvin Beckwith, the founder and original commanding officer of the real Delta Force refused to have anything further to do with production as a result.

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