Because of director Lou Lombardo's drug use throughout the picture, the finale of the film was shot by director Anthony Squire after the producers expressed safety concerns.
Filming was delayed for several days when actor George Segal slipped on pavement after shooting a fight scene and injured his leg.
Aleksey Kosygin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Nikolai Podgorny governed the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Kosygin retired on October 23rd, 1980, after a failed attempt to decentralize the Soviet economy. He died on December 18th, 1980.
Initially, the provincial Canadian authorities were uncooperative in allowing the film company to shoot the climactic scene at the National Railroads Hilton Hotel. The filming caused a two-hour traffic jam, causing the police to declare that Bulldog Productions had overstepped permission.
The band in the opening scene is playing a well known folk song called Polyushka Polye. It is known by several names, one of the most common is, simply, Russian Fields.