Neil Jordan originally intended to call Le cri des larmes (1992) "The Soldier's Wife." His friend Stanley Kubrick recommended a title change because he believed that films with religious or military titles usually deterred audiences and were often financial failures, something Jordan had experienced when The Miracle (1991) and Nous ne sommes pas des anges (1989) flopped at the box office. Jordan selected the new title from a 1960s British pop hit.
In Le cri des larmes (1992), Stephen Rea plays a member of the Irish Republican Army. In his actual life, Rea was married for 20 years to Dolours Price, a member of the IRA who participated in a car bombing at London's Old Bailey in 1973. For her part in the bombing, Price was given a life sentence, though she actually only served seven years in prison. Rea and Price were married during the time that Rea filmed "The Crying Game"; they divorced in 2003 and Price died in 2013. In a posthumously released interview, Price admitted to also playing a role in one of the most notorious unsolved crimes of the "troubles" era: the 1972 kidnapping and murder of a Belfast mother of 10, named Jean McConville, whose disappearance remained an open mystery until her body was found in 2003.
Channel 4, which originally backed the film, felt that the film's ending made it unreleasable. Neil Jordan wrote and filmed a totally different ending. When the film was cut with the new ending in place, all agreed that it didn't work, and the production received the funding to film Jordan's original. The alternative ending is included in the bonus material of some DVD releases.