Trivia: "Mark" in the film is in reality Mike Coburn, who wrote his own account of Bravo Two Zero. Another writer and ex-SAS, Michael Asher (in "The real Bravo Two Zero") travelled to the area of events and found a different truth than in "McNab's" book. For example that Andy McNab is not his real name, that the cab was not a New York cab but a Toyota Crown and that there is actually no evidence that the patrol ever got into any big fire fights at all. Names and cars are minor discrepancies but the fights are way off what could be called "real events". The film is rather true to the book by "McNab" but not all true to the real events as told by other members and fact finders.
Trivia: The scenes on the Haynes were filmed on an actual Buckley Class destroyer escort, the USS Whitehurst (DE 634). A great number of the Whitehurst crew act in the movie as the crew of the Haynes, with the commanding officer Lieutenant Commander Walter R. Smith playing the chief engineer (though on IMDB this role is credited to Robert Boon).
Trivia: The first film in the "Carry On" series. It had not originally been planned as the start of a movie series, but after its success at the box-office, producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas set about a further project with "Carry On Nurse" (1959), which was enormously successful. The "Carry On" series of films evolved after that.
Trivia: Towards the end of the film, in various scenes involving trains & railways, if you look carefully, you can quite see that no attempt has been made to disguise the loco's etc. into German locos. You can quite see in various shots 'British Railways' and the British Railways roundel etc. If you know your train stuff, you can quite see all the locos, coaches, wagons etc. are British Railways stock. Also, in the scene in the big station before Dirk Bogarde is captured, and put into a room out the back with his fellow escapees, if you look closely in the background, the station is London Victoria by the way, you can quite see a SR suburban EMU waiting in one of the bay platforms.
Trivia: Even though Angelina Jolie plays Colin Farrell's mother in the movie, she is only a year older than Farrell.
Trivia: When the destroyer is bombed next to the mole, the shots of it sinking are of the corvette Compass Rose from The Cruel Sea.
Trivia: When Sergeant Snow thrusts his sword into a horse rustler, he yells a Wilhelm scream.
Trivia: When Lance is thrown on the bar during the bar brawl, he yells the Wilhelm scream.
Trivia: Hitchcock's cameo comes twelve minutes into the movie - he can be seen wearing a hat and coat and reading a newspaper after Joel McCrea leaves the hotel.
Trivia: The Chinese extras cast in this film were almost all Spanish residents, especially in Madrid. This was done to such an extreme extent that some Chinese restaurants and other Chinese-Spanish-owned businesses in the Madrid area especially were forced to close for a few days due to lack of personnel.
Trivia: The first Tom and Jerry cartoon to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Trivia: Lina Wertmuller became the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director with this film.
Trivia: Sir Alec Guinness won his only Oscar for his role as Colonel Nicholson in this movie.
Trivia: The characters John Blackthorne and Toranaga are based upon two historical figures: Togukawa Ieyasu and William Adams, an Englishman who both became a samurai and a close advisor to Ieyasu in the 1600s.
