Trivia

The explosions in this movie were provided not by special effects technicians, but by the Dutch Marines. In his DVD commentary on this movie, director Paul Verhoeven states that the explosive charges were held in place with metal. When one of the charges was set off, it blew the metal to bits. One of the flying fragments nearly killed Rutger Hauer.

Rijk de Gooyer, who played Gestapo collaborator Breitner, was part of the resistance in The Netherlands during World War II. As a result, he harbored quite some anti-German sentiments towards his fellow actor Reinhard Kolldehoff, who played Wehrmacht General Geisman. This even went as far as firing a gas pistol next to Kolldehoff's head just before they had a scene together.

Producer Rob Houwer made a heavily re-edited version of this movie for the foreign market, without director Paul Verhoeven's prior knowledge. According to Verhoeven, this truncated version, re-titled "Survival Run", missed almost an hour worth of footage, leaving only action scenes with very little exposition or historical context, and was dubbed by British actors using ridiculous European accents. Houwer actually preferred this version over the original cut. This would probably have become the most widely released international version of the film, and have destroyed Verhoeven's prospects of an international breakthrough, had it not been for the efforts of Dan Ireland. Ireland knew Verhoeven's prior works, and had already screened the original version for a film festival, which he found sufficiently impressive to show to Steven Spielberg. This led to the American distributor requesting the original cut over the re-edited version, which was subsequently nominated for a Golden Globe. Verhoeven still credits Ireland with saving his future career in the United States.

The first scene plays in the fraternity building of Leiden, which was burned down in 1959. This movie was made in the 1970s, so they had to make a substitute. But the fraternity club of Delft has a clubhouse which was designed by the same architect as the one of Leiden and had great similarities. The fraternities of Leiden and Delft have a sort of love/hate relationship, so the Delft fraternity let this movie be made there for free on two conditions: They had to use the fraternity plates during the first scene (in full view). And they had to order a Pils (lager, and the specific Delft way to order a beer) instead of the Leiden way, which is just beer. To this day, this stings the Leiden fraternity a little.

In the opening scene, mock newsreel footage shows Queen Wilhelmina (Andrea Domburg) and her aide-de-camp, Erik Lanshof (Rutger Hauer) arriving in The Netherlands after the country's liberation at the end of World War II. The footage is intercut with genuine footage, shot by American and Dutch cameramen, of the real Queen Wilhelmina, accompanied by her real aide-de-camp, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, the author of the book on which this movie was based. To make the mock newsreel appear even more authentic, the filmmakers convinced the man who had done the voice-over work for genuine postwar Dutch newsreels to come out of retirement and provide the voice-over for the opening sequence. The airport being showed is the airport of Teuge (which is still in use today) and is situated between the towns of Apeldoorn and Twello. Near the entrance of the airport is a plaque commemorating the event of the Queen returning to The Netherlands.