Trivia for
Lethal Weapon (1987) More at IMDbPro »

• Franco Zeffirelli reportedly decided to offer Mel Gibson the role of Hamlet after seeing his suicide contemplation scene in this film.
  
  
• Legendary stuntman Dar Robinson was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly after principal photography was finished. Director Richard Donner dedicated the film to him.
  
  
• Hollywood city officials hung Christmas decorations on Hollywood Blvd. a few months early so that the scenes shot for this film, particularly the action scenes near the end of the picture, looked like they happened at the end of the year.
  
  
• One sequence shows a theatre marquee advertising The Lost Boys (1987), a film Richard Donner was producing at the time.
  
  
• An alternate opening and ending were both filmed (and are available on the Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) DVD). The alternate opening featured Martin Riggs drinking alone in a bar where he is accosted by a couple of thugs who want his money. Riggs claims all of his is in the bank and tells the thugs "not to fuck with him." The thugs attack him, but Riggs easily subdues them. He is then allowed to take a free bottle of booze from the bar in exchange for never returning. Director Richard Donner felt the movie should open with a brighter look at Riggs and filmed the scene with Riggs awakening in his trailer to replace it. The alternate ending featured Riggs and Murtaugh saying good-bye to one another. Murtaugh tells Riggs he's thinking of retiring, but Riggs tells him not to.
  
  
• Jackie Swanson did perform the high fall on her own. Trained by legendary stuntman Dar Robinson.
  
  
• Body count: 26
  
  
• Danny Glover's character (Sergeant Roger Murtaugh) is 50 years old in the movie, but Glover was actually 40 years old when the movie was shot back in 1986
  
  
• According to a June 2007 Vanity Fair article, Bruce Willis was considered for the Riggs role.
  
  
• In his "E! True Hollywood Story" bio, Gary Busey says he was hired to play Joshua because they were looking for someone big and menacing enough to be a believable foe for Mel Gibson. Busey also credits the film for reviving his failing movie career.
  
  
• Leonard Nimoy was one of the choices considered for directing, but he didn't feel comfortable doing action movies, and he was working on Three Men And A Baby at the time.
  
  
• Film's soundtrack includes Elvis Presley song I'll Be Home for Christmas. Darlene Love, who plays Murtaugh's wife, was background dancer in Elvis' production Elvis (1968) (TV).
  
  

• SPOILER: During a conversation between Danny Glover and Tom Atkins (Michael Hunsaker), before Atkins gets shot, he reveals that he worked for an operation called Air America which involved the CIA and dealt with shipping heroin out of Laos. Mel Gibson starred in a movie titled Air America (1990) that may have been based on this conversation. However, it is equally possible that Hunsacker (as well as _Air America (1990)_qv) was referring to the historically factual Air America, an American passenger and cargo airline covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1950 to 1976. It supplied and supported covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
  
  

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