How old was Alec Baldwin when he made Hunt for Red October?

Sir Sean Connery spent time underway aboard the U.S.S. Puffer (S.S.N. 652) preparing for his role. He was given Commander status, and allowed to give commands while underway (with the Captain beside him).

After the release of Tom Clancy's novel "The Hunt for Red October," some members of Congress contacted the CIA, demanding to know why the Russians had invented a caterpillar drive before the U.S. Navy did. Although a result of good research, the caterpillar drive is pure fiction.

When the movie was first released on VHS in 1991, the tapes were red.

During filming, several of the actors portraying U.S.S. Dallas crewmen took a cruise off the coast of San Diego on the U.S.S. Salt Lake City (S.S.N.-716) a real Los Angeles-class submarine. To help Scott Glenn train for his role as the Dallas's commander, the real commander of the Salt Lake City, Thomas Fargo, ordered his crew to treat Glenn as equal rank, first giving reports to Fargo, then give the same report to Glenn. Glenn based his performance of Captain Bart Mancuso on Commander Fargo, giving orders in a calm, even voice -- even in tense situations; saying, "whatever good happened in the performance, basically I owe to now Admiral Fargo, thank you sir."

The fighter crashing into the flight deck was stock footage of a F9F Panther test flight in 1951. This particular aircraft was piloted by official test pilot George Chamberlain Duncan (1917-1995). Duncan survived the crash with minor burns, and after a few months, he was back flying again.

To help the audience quickly grasp which sub's interior they were seeing as the movie jumped from scene to scene and sub to sub, the filmmakers created a subtle lighting scheme: blue for Red October, green for the Alfa class "V.K. Konovalov", and red for Dallas.

While under attack from the other Russian submarine, Ramius asks Ryan which books he has written. Ryan describes one book about Admiral Halsey, to which Ramius replies "I know this book. Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan. Halsey acted stupidly." No further explanation is given, but they are referring to the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. The U.S. was about to invade the Phillipines and knew the Japanese Navy would counterattack, but didn't know where. Halsey's fleet was supposed to guard the northern approaches to the invasion beaches. The Japanese Navy sent a small fleet of their ships in one direction as a decoy. Halsey took the bait and sent his entire fleet after it, but without informing the rest of the U.S. Navy of what he was up to, leaving the north completely unguarded. (This action is what Ramius refers to when he says "Halsey acted stupidly.") The rest of the Japanese Navy was able to slip through unscathed and undetected. If not for the valiant action of destroyers and escort carriers, the Japanese fleet could have devastated the U.S. invasion fleet.

The underwater model of the Red October has never been in the water. This effect was achieved using mist from dry ice on the "underwater" set and a few digital touch-ups. The sub was hung by twelve wires, from an overhead grid, which gave the ability to tilt and turn the model as needed.

Navy recruiters set up booths in some theater lobbies for people to sign up to join the service, or to at least look into it. The Pentagon hoped that this movie would do for the submarine service what Top Gun (1986) did for Naval aviation.

After being faxed the script, Sir Sean Connery initially turned the role down on the basis of the plot being unrealistic for the post-Cold War era. Whoever sent the fax neglected to include the foreword, explaining the movie as historical. Once he received the foreword, Connery accepted the role.

Alec Baldwin accepted the role of Jack Ryan because Harrison Ford turned it down. Cast member Sam Neill also benefited from Ford's refusal three years later by being cast in the lead role of Jurassic Park (1993). Interestingly, Baldwin asked for a big pay increase for Patriot Games (1992), to which the producers allegedly replied, "for that price, we could get Harrison Ford." Baldwin held his ground and the studio agreed to the fee, but for Ford instead of Baldwin.

This movie starts out in Russian, then switches to English, in an early scene, as the political officer reads a passage from a book, which contains a quote from Robert Oppenheimer. The switch occurs on the word "Armageddon," which is the same in both languages, but pronounced differently.

$20,000 was spent on Sir Sean Connery's toupée due to reshoots after he tried to pass off a ponytail style haircut.

Two of the submarine Captains in this movie have actual Navy experience. Sir Sean Connery was in the Royal Navy before becoming an actor. Scott Glenn spent three years in the United States Marine Corps.

Alec Baldwin stated that it was this role that effectively launched his big-time career. Although he had prior movie successes, most were in smaller roles or cult movies, and he was therefore a considerably lesser known actor before landing the role of Jack Ryan.

The scene where Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) is lowered onto the U.S.S. Dallas was filmed in the parking lot of the Mole Pier at Long Beach Naval Station on a beautiful sunny day. Editing made it look like it was the ocean.

After consulting with the wardrobe and make-up departments behind John McTiernan's back, Sir Sean Connery arrived on-set for his first day of shoots with his hairpiece incorporating a ponytail. Several years later, once Connery's potential influence had greatly waned, McTiernan stated in an interview with Sight & Sound Magazine that he was "f---ing livid" with Connery, and that the Scottish actor tried to use his considerable heft with the studio, going over the director's head to pass the alteration with producers. It seemed as though Connery was to get his way until midway through the second day's shooting, when director of photography Jan De Bont started laughing while reviewing the dailies, remarking to Connery that his ponytail looked like "a limp, swinging d--k." This soon became a meme among the crew, and by the end of the second day, Connery was so upset at the mockery, he relented, having make-up remove the alteration and forcing the re-shoot of a key scene. McTiernan joked that the reported cost of the hairpiece, approximately $20,000, was mainly down to the cost of those subsequent re-shoots, and that the hair seen in the final movie was merely "a ten dollar bargain from a thrift shop."

Director John McTiernan previously used the same teddy bear in Die Hard (1988).

Besides the "title card" notice indicating that the story is set in November of 1984, the story is also dated by mention of "Premier Chernenko." Konstantin Chernenko ascended to Soviet leadership in 1984, succeeding the recently deceased Yuri Andropov as the General Secretary of the C.P.S.U., and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Chernenko was seriously ill at the time of Andropov's death, reportedly struggling to read a eulogy at his predecessor's funeral. Chernenko died in March of 1985, meaning that his meeting with Admiral Padorin would have had to occur within that narrow time frame.

The U.S. Naval Institute, a private, not-for-profit professional military association, located on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has been publishing books and magazines related to Naval strategy and maritime history since 1874. A copy of the Naval Institute's monthly magazine "Proceedings" is seen in Ryan's London apartment. In 1984, the U.S. Naval Institute published a work of fiction, for the first time in its history, Tom Clancy's novel "The Hunt for Red October."

At the end of the movie, Captain Marko Ramius (Sir Sean Connery) quotes a poem that is attributed to Christopher Columbus. According to director John McTiernan, the poem was actually written for this movie by screenwriter Larry Ferguson.

When the Dallas is tracking the "Red October", a Dallas crewman notes a "milliGal anomaly." At the time this movie was released, this inadvertently revealed a classified U.S. government program using gravity instruments aboard submarines as high-tech sensors. Gravimeters would enable subs to run silent, without sonar, if fully developed. The U.S. government was thought to have spent close to a billion dollars on the gravity gradiometer project, run by Bell Aerospace. When this movie came out, Bell was forced to reveal the secret project. The technology ultimately was used in civilian projects, notably for oil exploration.

During filming in 1989, the U.S.S. Houston, which doubled for the U.S.S. Dallas in the movie, snagged the tow cable between the commercial tugboat Barcona and a barge, sinking the tugboat ten miles off Long Beach, California. One crewman drowned, and two more were rescued.

Filming started on April 3, 1989, with the Cold War still in progress, but when it was released in 1990, the Soviet government announced that the Communist Party was no longer in charge of everything. Producers found this obstacle irrelevant, and went on with the release, but using a disclaimer, telling that the story takes place in 1984 (the same year Tom Clancy's novel was published) during the Cold War.

Captain Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn) asks Seaman Jones (Courtney B. Vance) "How many Typhoons you got in the computer?" His reply is "six, sir." This is true. Russia built and deployed only six Typhoon class submarines. A seventh was planned, but never started as the U.S.S.R. collapsed in 1991.

Due to his obligation to this movie, director John McTiernan had to pass up the opportunity to direct Die Hard 2 (1990).

For the purposes of filming the underwater model of the Red October, only the left side of the sub was detailed to appear as an authentic submarine. The effect of showing the right side of the boat was achieved by simply turning the frame and reversing the image.

James Earl Jones (Admiral James Greer) was the only actor to reprise his role in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

The crew of the U.S.S. Dallas adopted the tagline "The Hunt Is On" as an unofficial ship's motto.

Klaus Maria Brandauer was originally cast as Captain Marko Ramius, but broke his leg prior to filming. It was Brandauer who suggested his friend Sir Sean Connery for the role, having known him since they appeared in Never Say Never Again (1983). The same year this movie was released, they shared the screen in The Russia House (1990), another story set during the Cold War.

Sir Sean Connery's conversation with Sam Neill in the Captain's quarters of the Red October has a similar feel as the conversation between Mr. Starbuck and Captain Ahab from Chapter 132 ("The Symphony") of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Ahab and Ramius both spent forty years at sea, and share the line "I widowed her the day I married her," concerning their wives.

Several employees that designed and built submarines from the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company (now known as Northrop/Grumman Newport News) were set design advisors for the submarine interiors on the Dallas and Red October. Some of the interiors actually contain real submarine items, mostly things like hatches, lights, et cetera, to add realism.

In one scene, the Dallas COB teases Seaman Jones about his "phantom Russian submarine." The 2013 submarine thriller Phantom (2013) was loosely inspired by an incident involving the Soviet submarine K-129, which sank in 1968 under mysterious circumstances amid suspicion of, like Ramius and his officers, having gone rogue. Though no official cause of what happened is known, as it went down with all hands, circumstantial evidence suggests that the boat sank while attempting to fire a nuclear missile at Pearl Harbor; one theory is that a group of high-ranking KGB officials, fearing for the Soviet Union's survival, placed a contingent of special forces commandos, known as the OZNAZ, onboard in an attempt to start a nuclear war between the United States and China, which the sub's captain prevented by scuttling it. And while the boat is never mentioned by name, the K-129 incident is alluded to in the "Red October" novel; at least twice, it is referenced only as a submarine that the Soviets lost and which was salvaged off the coast of Hawaii.

Three main actors had prior military experience. Sir Sean Connery joined the Royal Navy when he was fifteen and served on the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Formidable, Scott Glenn was a U.S. Marine, and James Earl Jones was an Officer in the U.S. Army.

The dummy torpedoes used in this movie were prepared and assembled at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, California, by the Advanced Underwater Weapon department.

Screenwriter Larry Ferguson played the role of C.O.B. [Chief (Petty Officer) of the Boat] on the U.S.S. Dallas.

Harrison Ford turned down the role of Jack Ryan, as he felt the script focused too heavily on Captain Ramius, played by Sir Sean Connery. Ford had previously played Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). His father, Henry Jones, Sr. was played by Connery.

The name of the frigate that rescues the Red October's crew, the Reuben James, is from another of Tom Clancy's novels, "Red Storm Rising."

Gates McFadden filmed her role during the year she had been dismissed from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Afterward, she rejoined the show and had to be replaced by Anne Archer in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

"Lieutenant Commander Mike Hewitt" is the torpedo operator on the surface ship who calls out the range of the torpedo fired on the "Red October," only for it to be remotely detonated by Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones) just prior to impact. He is not referred to by name in the movie, but his character and the actor's name is listed in the credits. "Mike Hewitt" is a real person, although at the time of filming, he was Captain of the U.S.S. Fulton, a "sub-tender" ship stationed at the Naval Base in Groton, Connecticut. He was a technical advisor on this movie, and they gave his name to the character as a thank you.

This is the cinematic debut of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan character.

Interiors for the Red October were filmed on the U.S.S. Blueback, the last operating diesel submarine in the U.S. Navy. The Blueback is now docked in Portland, Oregon, in front of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and is regularly open for tours by the public.

The dual-beeping sound effect of the Red October moving on the U.S.S. Dallas's sonar screen was also used in Patriot Games (1992) as the sound of Jack Ryan's electrocardiogram.

The novel contains much more involvement and cooperation with the British Navy, while the movie contains very little, if any, British involvement.

Typhoon-class submarines were fully twenty-five percent bigger than their American counterparts, the Ohio-class missile boats. As their missiles could be deployed from nearly anywhere in the world, both submarines had relatively simple jobs; put to sea and disappear. Typhoons were usually confined to activities in the Barents Sea. However, Ohio boats are well-known to patrol into Russian waters, particularly the Baltic Sea, which is fairly close to three major cities; Volgograd, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, totalling nearly twenty million people.

Scott Glenn and Alec Baldwin took an overnight trip aboard the U.S.S. Salt Lake City, commanded by Commander (later Admiral) Thomas B. Fargo. Glenn based his portrayal of Captain Bart Mancuso on Fargo.

John McTiernan replaced his original editor, Peter Zinner, because Zinner found McTiernan's shooting approach difficult to work with; especially given his more traditional film making background. However, Zinner has a bit part as a Soviet Admiral.

The helicopter seen taking off from the flight deck of the U.S.S. Reuben James is a Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawk assigned to Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron (Light) 43 (HSL-43) "Battlecats" Homeported at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, California. For filming of this movie, a detachment was sent to, and operated out of, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Oak Harbor, Washington.

When Ryan asks if the doors visible on the Red October could be used to launch an I.C.B.M. horizontally, Skip Styler responds with "Sure. Why would you want to?" This is not as unfeasible as it sounds. The UUM-44 SUBROC (SUBmarine ROCket), was a ballistic missile operational with the U.S. Navy at the time, specifically designed to be launched from a torpedo tube in order for the submarine to stay undetected for longer. The SUBROC, however, was a kiloton range anti-nuclear submarine depth charge, rather than a city levelling megaton range I.C.B.M. The size of the latter would bring with it significant additional technical challenges with limited gains, hence Skip's question.

It is a manly movie: Gates McFadden with Louise Borras (as Jack Ryan's wife and daughter) and Denise E. James as a flight attendant have the only credited female speaking roles, and all of their dialogue scenes are over before the end of the opening credits. There is an uncredited female engineer speaking in the background at Skip Tyler's dry-dock, and another (non-speaking) flight attendant appears at the end, but apart from that, there are no other women in this movie.

James Earl Jones is the only actor to appear in the following two Jack Ryan films.

Marco Ramius says the line "A little revolution now and then, is a healthy thing. Don't you think?" This is a slightly altered version of the famous line by Thomas Jefferson in one of his letters. Jefferson wrote it as "A little revolution now and then, is a good thing. Don't you think?"

The Bible verses that Putin reads at the beginning of his conversation with Ramius, come from Revelation 16:15-17.

During the scene where Admiral Padorin (Peter Zinner) receives the letter from Captain Marko Ramius (Sir Sean Connery), he uses a miniature sword as a letter opener. In the novel, it was stated to be his service knife, damaged while defending himself from a Nazi soldier after his gunboat sank.

Despite of the intense overtone of the movie, this is John McTiernan's only PG rated movie. Most of his movies are mainly rated R or PG-13.

Tom Clancy's novel "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" is a direct sequel to this story. In it Clancy writes about the ultimate fate of Marko Ramius and the Red October.

Two torpedoes are dropped from the air at the Red October. One from a Bear-Foxtrot bomber, and the other from a Seahawk helicopter. There was only one actual torpedo drop which was incorrectly reported here as: "filmed from two different angles for the attacks". By watching carefully, the two sequences, played at the same time, it can be easily seen that the splash pattern around the torpedo of the second sequence is just the mirror image of the first sequence.

In the opening credits, Red October is escorted by two tugboats and a U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender, clearly seen off its starboard quarter.

Jack Ryan mentions that he wrote a book about Admiral William F. Halsey. This is appropriate, as Ryan is also a Professor of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, as shown in Patriot Games (1992).

John McTiernan was unable to direct Die Hard 2 (1990) due to schedule conflicts with filming this movie, but returned to the franchise to direct Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). The motto of the U.S.S. Reuben James (F.F.G.-57) which appears and is mentioned by name is "Back With A Vengeance".

This movie was released in March 2, 1990, just as Major League Baseball was entering spring training. Lou Piniella and the rest of the Cincinnati Reds used this movie all season for motivation and swept the Oakland As in the World Series that October.

Richard Jordan's character has a bowl of jelly beans on his desk. The movie takes place during the Reagan presidency. Reagan's fondness for jelly beans was well known.

Gates McFadden only took the very small part of Cathy Ryan because she was told that in Patriot Games (1992), the role would be heavily expanded. This would come to pass, but McFadden was replaced due to the fact that Alec Baldwin refused to reprise his role due to financial disagreements. Consequently, the producers wanted both characters played by a new actor and actress.

There was actually a fire aboard the flight deck of the real U.S.S. Enterprise. It occurred on January 14, 1969. The Enterprise was undergoing O.R.I. (Operational Readiness Inspections), prior to going to Vietnam. The fire took the lives of twenty-three men.

Coincidentally, while the real U.S. warship Reuben James participated in this movie, it also played a pivotal role as an escort vessel in the Tom Clancy novel "Red Storm Rising."

John McTiernan was unable to direct Patriot Games (1992) because he was filming Medicine Man (1992) with Sir Sean Connery. This probably left McTiernan with a sense of being there before, as he was unable to direct Die Hard 2 (1990), due to working on this movie.

Richard Jordan's line to Alec Baldwin "We're not talking about some stray pilot with a MiG" refers to aviator Viktor Belenko, who fled Chuguyevka Air Base with an ultra-secret MiG-25 jet fighter in 1976. Far from being a stray (a pilot experiencing navigation or control problems), Belenko had deliberately defected to the United States. His out-of-print biography has become a rare book, now mostly read as an illicit e-book.

When the U.S.S. Dallas first detects the "Red October," sonar operator Seaman Jones (Courtney B. Vance) reports: "I'd say we had a boomer coming out of the barn. Could be a missile boat out of Polyarny." Both sentences are equivalent. The second sentence sounds different, obviously added later in case the audience did not understand the references to "boomer" and "barn."

The frigate shown when the "Red October" surfaces is not the real U.S.S. Reuben James, an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate with hull number 57. U.S.S. Gary, hull number 51, portrayed Reuben James and also provided some of the engine room shots of "Red October." The crew also participated in some scenes.

A U.S. Navy yard oiler was used to escort the submarine at the beginning of the movie. It was in Long Beach, California, and the "Red October" was built to look like it submerged by using two articulated barges and flooding the front one while being towed.

Most of Gates McFadden's role as Cathy Ryan was deleted from the final print.

Included among the American Film Institute's 2001 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.

The ship escorting the "Red October" out of port is the U.S.C.G.C. Blackhaw (WLB-390), a buoy tender stationed in San Francisco, California at that time.

Kevin Costner turned down the role of Jack Ryan in order to make Dances with Wolves (1990). He played Thomas Harper in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014). Costner and Sir Sean Connery were in The Untouchables (1987) and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).

During the "Andrei, you've lost another submarine" scene near the end of the movie, Presidential Advisor Jeffrey Pelt is seen eating jellybeans out of a clear candy dish. The jellybeans are likely a reference to then-President Reagan's preference for that candy, which were usually provided to the President by the California company that became Jelly Belly.

Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) and Captain Marko Ramius (Sir Sean Connery), despite being the two leads, do not come face-to-face until over one hour and fifty minutes into this movie.

The SOSUS warning nets Ryan refers to is the Sound Surveillance Undersea System, a passive sonar system designed by the United States Navy to detect Soviet submarines in the Atlantic Ocean, at the time of this film's release this system was still technically classified. The system was comprised of several shore stations that monitor the Deep Sound Channel, which is a layer of the ocean where conditions allow sound to be carried over much greater distances than normal, as well as hydrophones mounted along the ocean bottom in channels. Submarines traveling from the Soviet Union's main submarine base in Murmansk into the Atlantic would have to pass through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap, which is a chokepoint created by the three landmasses which vessels must travel between. A series of hydrophones was set up along the beds of these channels which would detect the engine noise of any submarine traveling through the channel. The system was also later supplemented at the height of the Cold War by the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), which consisted of a number of anti-submarine destroyers patrolling the Atlantic towing passive sonar arrays several miles behind the destroyer in order to pick up the feint signal of a quiet submarine. These specially equipped destroyers carried a large complement of torpedoes, mines and depth charges in the event that a hostile submarine was encountered.

Gates McFadden, who is American, plays Cathy Ryan with an English accent. The role was subsequently played by Keira Knightley, who is English, with an American accent.

Factual errors: The Typhoon is a N.A.T.O. designated name, so the Russians were unlikely to use it. The Russian name for the class is "Akula class." This is not to be confused with name "Akula class" that the N.A.T.O. used to designate the Russian Project 971 Shchuka-B class attack submarine. However, since this is a fictional movie based on a fictional novel, anything is possible.

The US Navy destroyer, U.S.S. Reuben James, featured in the climax is the namesake of the U.S.S. Reuben James (DD 245) the first US Navy ship sunk (Oct 31, 1941) by hostile action in the European theater of WW II.

Captain Mancuso is told by his yeoman that they just received a message on the ELF. He is referring to Extremely Low Frequency radio, which are radio signals between 3 to 30 Hertz. One common natural source of ELF signals is lightning strikes, the signal given off by a lightning strike travels around the world and can be picked up by a radio receiver, this is how scientists are able to keep track of the exact time and location of every lightning strike, it is also how lightning strikes can be heard on AM radio, they are picked up as a sudden burst of static. Unlike most radio signals ELF is able to penetrate seawater to great depths, the downside to ELF is that it takes a huge antenna and massive amounts of power to generate an ELF signal strong enough to reach a submerged boat, which is why its only practical use is for communicated with submarines. Up until 2004 the U.S. Navy had a few ELF facilities which consisted of underground cable antennas anywhere from 10 to 30 miles long connected to transmitters that used megawatts of power, this allowed a signal to be sent to a submerged boat. When a submarine is surfaced they can use standard HF, VHF and UHF radio to both send and receive data, but when a submarine is submerged for the longest time it could only receive data, it would be impossible for a submarine to transmit data on ELF due to the massive amount of power required and the need for an extremely long antenna. In 2004 the ELF system was shutdown by the U.S. as newer technology allowed signals to be both sent and received by a submerged boat that didn't require massive amounts of power, and there were concerns that the extremely powerful ELF signals could be harmful to both human and marine life. The way a modern submerged boat communicates is with the Submarine Satellite Information Exchange Sub-System (SSIXS), a component of the Navy Ultra High-Frequency Satellite Communications System (UHF SATCOM). The system works by a special buoy launched from a submerged boat that acts as a relay, the buoy is connected to the sub via fiberoptic cable, it then floats to the surface and connects with a military communication satellite in low orbit allowing the sub to both send and receive data. If the Navy needs to contact a submerged boat a plane flies over their position, or sometimes a ship, and sends a simple acoustic signal via a special hydrophone that tells the submerged boat to deploy their SSIXS buoy.

It is not a mistake that Bart Mancuso, the CO of the U.S.S. Dallas, is wearing the rank insignia of a Commander but is addressed as Captain. It is naval tradition to address whoever is in command of a vessel, regardless of their actual rank, as Captain. In fact most Navy warships are not commanded by a Captain: small ships like corvettes and littoral combat ships are typically commanded by a Lieutenant, frigates by a Lieutenant Commander, attack submarines, destroyers and cruisers by a Commander, typically only missile boats and aircraft carriers are commanded by an officer with the rank of Captain.

The novel, which this movie is based on, went into more detail about the U.S.S. Dallas computer system as she was retrofitted with the "then latest" 64 bit computer system which was able to detect, store and recognize in its memory the individual sounds of different Soviet subs. This mirrored the real life U.S.S. Dallas which at the time of her commission, in July of 1981, she was the only Los Angeles class fast attack submarine to feature an all digital combat systems suite.

Tom Clancy's novel became a massive best-seller in 1984 after president Ronald Reagan was spotted carrying the book with him. The film adaptation came six years later and it was a box-office hit and by that time Clancy was already established as a known author.

The studio attempted to secure Harrison Ford for the role of Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford would go on to portray a Soviet submarine captain on another ill-fated Soviet submarine in K19: The Widowmaker.

Ryan asks Skip Tyler if the unknown doors on the Red October could be a towed sonar array, which is a series of hydrophones towed behind a submarine or a surface warship on a cable. These cables can be miles long, towing a sonar array behind a vessel keeps the sensors away from the noise generated by a ship's engines and equipment, allowing for much greater signal-to-noise ratios, which in turn allows more accurate tracking of faint sonar contacts, such as a quiet submarine. The towed sonar array offers much greater resolution and range compared to a hull mounted sonar array and also has the added advantage of giving sonar coverage of a vessel's baffles, the area directly behind a vessel's screws, which is a blind spot for hull mounted sonar. The one disadvantage to using a towed sonar is that it limits a vessel's speed and maneuvering, typically while having the array deployed a ship is limited to 1/3 speed, going too fast or turning too sharply reduces signal resolution and can also damage the array.

When discussing the implications of a Soviet ballistic missile submarine that couldn't be detected by sonar Skip Tyler told Ryan that when he was 12 he helped his father build a bomb shelter in their basement because "some fool parked a dozen warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida". He is referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962 the Soviet Union secretly began constructing nuclear missile silos in Cuba as a response to the United States constructing their own missile silos in Italy and Turkey. In October of that year U.S. spy planes got proof that the Soviets had deployed six SS-4 one megaton yield and six SS-5 2.3 megaton nuclear ballistic missiles in the silos and learned that additional missiles were in route via Soviet warships in the Atlantic. Upon learning this President John F. Kennedy was advised by the National Security Council to order an airstrike to destroy the silos and then launch a land invasion of Cuba. Thankfully President Kennedy chose a less aggressive response, he ordered the Navy's Atlantic fleet to surround Cuba creating a blockade to prevent more missiles from entering Cuba, he then sent a message to the Soviet Union informing them that the ships would be removed from Cuba only if and when all of the Soviet missiles and their silos were dismantled, removed and returned to Russia, he also implored First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to meet for peaceful negotiations. It is safe to say this is the closest the world has ever been to nuclear war, the Soviet fleet attempted to run the blockade at one point, in response Kennedy ordered U.S. military forces worldwide alert status to be raised to DEFCON 2, the highest it had ever been at that point and which did not happen again until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. President Kennedy and Secretary Khrushchev finally reached an agreement, the Soviet Union agreed to remove all nuclear missiles from Cuba and dismantle their silos if the United States agreed to never again blockade or invade Cuba, and to also remove their ICBM's from Turkey and Italy. The last of the Soviet missiles and nuclear armed bombers left Cuba on November 20th and the Navy withdrew from the blockade the following day.

Despite some speculation, the fact that the political officer aboard Red October was named Putin is most probably a coincidence. Russian President Vladimir Putin was a former KGB agent. At the time this story is set, the real-life Putin would have been a low-ranking agent not known to the general Russian public, let alone to Americans. Also, in Tom Clancy's timelilne, Vladamir Putin is replaced by Valeri Volodin and Nikita Yermilov as Russian President. Clancy's character of Volodin, however, mirrors the real-life Putin in terms of having invaded Ukraine in fiction over ten years before it happened in reality.

The real-life U.S.S. Dallas (SSN-700) completed her final deployment on November 22nd, 2016 and decommissioned a year later on December 5th, 2017. At the time of her retirement, the U.S.S. Dallas was in service for 36 years.

Alec Baldwin was succeeded in his role by Harrison Ford, with whom he appeared in Working Girl (1988); Ben Affleck, with whom he appeared in Pearl Harbor (2001); Chris Pine, with whom he appeared in Rise of the Guardians (2012); and John Krasinski, with whom he appeared in State and Main (2000), It's Complicated (2009), and Aloha (2015).

U.S.S. Reuben James (F.F.G.-57) was commissioned on March 22, 1986, and decommissioned on July 18, 2013.

A brief, lightly digitally altered shot from this movie was used as a sight gag in an episode of the sitcom 30 Rock (2006), in which Alec Baldwin had a starring role. The premise of the joke was that Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy, is trying to quell Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon's anxiety about hosting her own talk show for the first time. They perform a test with a high definition camera, which is unflattering or comical for most of the people who step in front of it: Lemon's minor facial flaws are severely exaggerated on the high-def monitor; downtrodden producer Pete appears to the camera as a naked man a few decades older than his actual age; and happy-go-lucky page Kenneth appears on the monitor as a Muppet. But Jack appears in high-def as a twenty-years-younger Alec Baldwin, thanks to several seconds of footage from this movie being broadcast on the monitor.

Marina Sirtis was considered to play Caroline "Cathy" Ryan which went to her Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) co-star and friend Gates McFadden.

Tommy Lee Jones was considered for the role of Captain Bart Mancuso.

When he's asked what books he's written for the CIA, Jack mentions a biography of William Halsey called "The Fighting Sailor," which is the book he's in the middle of trying to write when he's first introduced in the novel.

Robert Garland, John Milius, and David Shaber all did uncredited work on the script.

In the scene with the frigate "Ruben James," a second frigate was used during the filming. The U.S.S. Wadsworth (F.F.G.-9) was also used to depict the Ruben James. The Wadsworth's hull number 9 is clearly visible in a couple of scenes.

While entering the D.S.R.V., Captain Bart Mancuso (Scott Glenn) takes a lighthearted jab at Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) by suggesting that "Central Intelligence" is a contradiction in terms. This seems to be a failed attempt at a joke that is often told by military service members both inside and outside the intelligence community who like to say that "military intelligence" is a contradiction in terms.

The only non-Best Picture Oscar nominee that year to be nominated for Best Editing.

Natalia Ramius died on November 23, 1983.

The cast includes one Oscar winner (Sir Sean Connery), and three Oscar nominees (Alec Baldwin, Peter Firth, and James Earl Jones).

Reunited director John McTiernan and cinematographer Jan De Bont after Die Hard (1988).

A "Bear Foxtrot" is shown and mentioned a few times. "Bear" is the NATO reporting name for the Tupolev Tu-95, a Soviet four-engine turboprop strategic bomber and missile platform. The Tupolev has been in service since November of 1952 and is still in service as of August 2022 with the Russian Aerospace Force, making the Tupolev the oldest strategic bomber and the only turboprop strategic bomber still in service in the world. It is also one of the loudest military planes in the world as well, mainly because the tips of the propeller blades spin faster than the speed of sound, but what the plane lacks in stealth it makes up for with speed. There are at least 20 variants of the Tupolev bomber in use at one time or another, each variant had a letter added to the end of the NATO reporting name to identify it. The Tupolev variant known as a "Bear Foxtrot" is a maritime reconnaissance/anti-submarine warfare bomber, it carries passive sonar buoys, depth charges, mines and torpedoes instead of missiles and bombs.

In the movie, the time the U.S. spent tracking down and "grabbing" the "Red October" is just a few days. In the Tom Clancy novel, the story unfolds over several more days.

Sir Sean Connery joined the cast after turning down the role of The Player in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990).

Jeff Bridges, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, Christopher Lambert, Stephen Lang, Michael Nouri, Kurt Russell, Bill Paxton, Ron Perlman, Sylvester Stallone, Patrick Swayze, John Travolta and Bruce Willis were considered to play Jack Ryan.

Average shot length = ~7.2 seconds. Median shot length = ~6.9 seconds.

Richard Jordan was the second choice for Dr. Jeffery Pelt, the National Security Adviser. The role was first offered to an Irish actor.

Tim Curry (Dr. Petrov) played the iconic evil clown Pennywise in Stephen King's It (1990). Bill Skarsgård, the son of Stellan Skarsgård (Captain Tupolev) also played Pennywise in It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019).

Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered to play Captain Marko Ramius since he worked with John McTiernan before on Predator (1987). He worked with McTiernan again on Last Action Hero (1993).

The mention of a MiG pilot defecting to the US in 1976 was also referenced in another Cold War fictional thriller novel Firefox. The subsequent film adaptation directed by and starring Clint Eastwood does not mention the incident of a defecting MiG pilot, though the original novel does on a few occasions.

Sam Neill's acting mentor was James Mason, who played the renegade Captain Nemo, commander of the submarine Nautilus, in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Oddly enough, in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) Sean Connery played Allan Quatermain, who met renegade Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), commander of the submarine Nautilus.

Gates McFadden is best known for her Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) role as a doctor aboard the fictional starship U.S.S. Enterprise. In this movie, she plays a doctor, whose husband is sent to the real U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Enterprise. The Captain of the Enterprise was played by Daniel Davis, who also appeared in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987).

If Kevin Costner had not turned down the role of Jack Ryan, he would have reunited with his The Untouchables (1987) co-star Sir Sean Connery on this movie, as well as The Presidio (1988), in which he was considered for the role of Jay Austin. But he worked with Connery again on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), in which Connery had a cameo as King Richard the Lionheart. Costner would have also reunited with producer Mace Neufeld after No Way Out (1987), which was also a Cold War thriller.

The trailer was narrated by Don LaFontaine.

Alec Baldwin appeared in Working Girl (1988) with Harrison Ford, who succeeded him in the role of Jack Ryan.

Eventually NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) released an 8-bit video game based on the movie, The Hunt for Red October (1991).

Carl Schenkel was the original choice as a director, but he refused because he didn't want to direct a movie with an all-male cast.

James Earl Jones and Sven-Ole Thorsen starred in Conan the Barbarian (1982), composed by Basil Poledouris.

As Jack Ryan's car arrives at Heathrow Airport, you can see a billboard for Evita, in which Joss Ackland (Andrei Lysenko) played Juan Perón in the West End production.

The first of three films in which Sam Neill's character is connected to Montana (the second was Jurassic Park (1993). In the third, The Horse Whisperer (1998), he played Robert McLean, Grace's father, who was played by Scarlett Johansson. In Just Cause (1995) Sean Connery played Paul Armstrong, the father of Katie, who was also played by Scarlett Johansson.

Gates McFadden played a doctor with a husband named Jack in this movie and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987).

Alec Baldwin and Tim Curry appeared in The Shadow (1994).

Alec Baldwin and Jeffrey Jones appeared in Beetlejuice (1988).

Director of photography Jan De Bont and composer Basil Poledouris also worked on Flesh+Blood (1985).

Rip Torn was announced for this movie.

Sir Sean Connery appeared in Marnie (1964) with Tippi Hedren, Bruce Dern, and Diane Baker. Alec Baldwin appeared with Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, in Working Girl (1988). Sam Neill appeared in Jurassic Park (1993) with Laura Dern (Bruce's daughter). Scott Glenn and Baker appeared in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Scott Glenn appeared with William Baldwin (Alec's younger brother) in Backdraft (1991).

Fred Thompson (Admiral Painter) and Courtney B. Vance (Seaman Jones) would go on to be part of the Law & Order (1990) franchise. Thompson as D.A. Arthur Branch on the original series as in its spin-offs Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001), Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005), and Conviction (2006). Vance played A.D.A. Ron Carver on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).

Sir Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin played the love interest of Kim Basinger in separate movies: Connery in Never Say Never Again (1983), and Baldwin in The Marrying Man (1991) and The Getaway (1994).

Sally Ryan was born in 1979.

Several of the cast have strong links to the espionage genre. In addition to Alec Baldwin's portrayal of Jack Ryan here he plays one of the founders of the CIA in The Good Shepherd (2006). Sean Connery was James Bond, Peter Firth would star in spy series MI-5 (2002), Richard Jordan would play CIA spy Harvey Gage in The Equalizer (1985) and Sam Neill would portray Sidney Riley, the Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983) in the eponymous series. Joss Ackland had a long history in the field, appearing in The Avengers: The Morning After (1969), S*P*Y*S (1974), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), A Quiet Conspiracy (1989), A Different Loyalty (2004), Icon (2005) and playing the head of MI6 in the TV mini-series Codename: Kyril (1988).

The cast of the sequels to this film included Samuel L Jackson, Gerald Sim, Miguel Sandoval, and Cameron Thor. Sam Neill appeared in Jurassic Park with all of those actors except Sim, whose brother-in-law was Richard Attenborough.

The film is classified 'U' (Unrestricted Public Exhibition) all ages in India.

Tom Clancy: One of the personnel on the deck of the U.S.S. Reuben James.

John McTiernan Sr.: During Jack's briefing for Jeffrey Pelt, the director's father as one of the advisors in attendance.