The movie contains several references to many real life revolutions and dictators: women wearing veils covering them from head to toe after the revolution (Iran), calling each other "citizen" (France); the gray uniform Thorne wears that resembles Stalin's (Russia) and Mao Zedong's (China); the First Lady's ludicrous wardrobe just like Ferdinand Marcos' wife (Phillipines) or dictatorial power being inherited from father to son (Haiti). Also, Thorne's beard looks similar to Marx's, and the "re-education" camp maybe a reference to Russian gulags.
The scene where Thorne makes a television appearance in jail is based on a true event. Jeremiah Denton was a prisoner during the Vietnam War and appeared in a television interview in 1966. He spoke that he was being treated well, but passed on the message "Torture" by blinking Morse code.
Thorne's decision to abolish scientists (physicians, professors), resembles the Khmer Rouge regime (Cambodia, 1975-1979).
When discussing the possibility that Maximilian killed his own father (which fulfills a prophecy made when Maximilian was born), Thorne remarks "I didn't see him gouging his eyes out over it." In Ancient Greek mythology, Oedipus was prophesied to kill his own father. When he discovered that he had killed his own father (and married his own mother), Oedipus blinded himself with his bare hands.
The two messages Thorne has written on the walls of his cell in the beginning of the film are "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" and "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun".
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