Directed by: Kevin Costner
Starring: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant
Other mistake: Dunbar has to race back to the fort in the middle of having a shave. The amount of soap on his face alters shot to shot.
Other mistake: At the beginning after Dunbar leaves the surgery area, he walks up to fence where a soldier is lying down. Next to him is an apple with the grocery sticker on it. (04:49:00)
Revealing mistake: In the extended version of the film during the buffalo hunt, there is a shot of a buffalo making a turn and in the distant horizon, you can briefly see a modern radio tower on top of a hill.
John Dunbar: The strangeness of this life cannot be measured: in trying to produce my own death, I was elevated to the status of a living hero.
Trivia: For his portrait of the Indians (which was radically different from all the earlier movies), Costner was made an honorary tribe member of the real-life Sioux.
Question: Why did Dunbar's superior kill himself as Dunbar was being taken to his new post?
Answer: Dunbar's superior supported the British ("The King is dead... Long live the King" said with a heavy British accent) and was likely a closet-case Redcoat his entire US military career. It was not rare and many suicides were a result of that.
This claim is not supported by the movie. "The King is dead. Long live the King" is a common idiom referring to the passing of power to someone new. It most definitely does not literally refer to the English King. The movie is set in the middle of Queen Victoria's reign. As for your assertion that there were a large number of English loyalists in the Union Army three generations after the Revolutionary War seems highly unlikely. Can you cite evidence of this?
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Answer: He was mentally disturbed and was depressed about being assigned to a "dead end" post with no chance at advancement. Dunbar, the hero, choosing to be assigned to the frontier, just pushed the poor soul over the edge.
Mark English
In a word, the disease syphilis. The urinary tract problems and the Insanity are possible side effects.
What are you basing this on? What in the movie indicates that he has syphilis?