49 Fun Facts About Top Gun

Who directed Top Gun?

Tony Scott. He had made only one feature, the vampire film The Hunger, but its look and his years of glossy TV adverts won the producers over.

Which film sold Top Gun's producers on Tom Cruise?

Risky Business. Once signed, Cruise spent the months before the shoot sitting in on real Top Gun classes and socialising with the Navy's pilots.

Which actor plays Goose, Maverick's back-seater and best friend?

Anthony Edwards. His Goose is killed when both men eject from a spinning jet and he strikes its canopy; Maverick later drops his dog tags into the sea.

Who plays Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky in Top Gun?

Val Kilmer. He thought the script silly and didn't want the part, but a contract with the studio left him no choice.

Who plays civilian instructor Charlotte 'Charlie' Blackwood?

Kelly McGillis. She had just starred opposite Harrison Ford in Witness; decades later she said plainly that nobody had asked her back for the sequel.

At which naval air station is the Fighter Weapons School set?

Miramar. The Navy founded the school at the San Diego base in 1969, during the Vietnam War, to teach what the film's opening calls the lost art of aerial combat.

On which aircraft carrier are Maverick and Goose stationed?

USS Enterprise. The crew spent days at sea aboard the real carrier, but some of its interiors are another ship entirely: the USS Ranger, filmed while docked in San Diego.

Which fighter do Maverick and Goose fly?

F-14 Tomcat. The Navy lent the jets, but Paramount paid for the fuel whenever they flew just for the cameras, a bill of thousands of dollars an hour.

What real aircraft portrayed the fictional enemy MiG-28?

Northrop F-5. The Navy's own school already flew the small jets as stand-in enemies in training, so the film simply painted them black and added red stars.

Who plays Commander Mike 'Viper' Metcalf?

Tom Skerritt. Viper borrows the callsign of Pete Pettigrew, a former Top Gun instructor who advised the film and slipped into it himself in a small role.

Who plays instructor Rick 'Jester' Heatherly?

Michael Ironside. His Jester is the instructor Maverick beats on the first training flight, but only by diving below the 10,000-foot floor, which earns a reprimand.

Which future Oscar winner plays RIO Sam 'Merlin' Wells?

Tim Robbins. Little known in 1986, he ends the film in Maverick's back seat for the final dogfight; the Oscar came years later for Mystic River.

Who plays Goose's wife, Carole Bradshaw?

Meg Ryan. She was still three years from stardom in When Harry Met Sally, and her scenes as Carole came back as flashbacks in the 2022 sequel.

What is the callsign of Maverick's first wingman, who quits after Top Gun's first dogfight?

Cougar. Shaken by an enemy missile lock, he hands in his wings, and the place at Top Gun that was meant for him passes to Maverick.

Who plays the carrier's air group commander, Stinger, in Top Gun?

James Tolkan, Back to the Future's Mr Strickland. His Stinger tears into Maverick for ignoring an order to land, then sends him to Top Gun anyway.

Which magazine published the 1983 article that inspired Top Gun?

California. The producers read Ehud Yonay's piece on the Navy's fighter pilots, with its cockpit photographs, and decided at once that it was their next film.

Offered any posting he likes after the final dogfight, what does Maverick choose?

An instructor's job at Top Gun. The pilot who broke every rule of the school asks to go back and teach there, and his commanding officer can only laugh.

A TV commercial for which carmaker won Top Gun's director the job?

Saab. The advert raced one of the Swedish firm's turbo cars against one of its own fighter jets, a miniature of the film the producers wanted.

Which actor turned down Maverick on political grounds and went to work for Stanley Kubrick instead?

Matthew Modine. He disliked the script's flag-waving, made Full Metal Jacket instead, and says he has never regretted the choice.

What did the US Navy set up at some cinemas showing Top Gun in 1986?

Recruiting booths. The Navy had put its carriers and fighter jets at the film's disposal, and once it was a hit, recruiters manned booths at selected cinemas to meet the filmgoers it had fired up.

What is Charlie Blackwood's profession in Top Gun?

Astrophysicist. Charlie was modelled on Christine Fox, a real civilian analyst at the base, who rose to become one of the Pentagon's most senior officials.

Which pilot beats Maverick to the Top Gun trophy?

Iceman. He takes the trophy while a grieving Maverick barely makes the ceremony, yet after the final dogfight tells him he can be his wingman any time.

Which Top Gun character turns out to have flown alongside Maverick's father?

Viper. He tells Maverick that his father, blamed in the official record, in fact died saving other pilots, and that Maverick is the better flyer.

In which beach city does Charlie's cottage, known as the 'Top Gun House', stand?

Oceanside. Paramount rented the Victorian beach cottage for two weeks in 1985; it was later moved, restored and reopened in 2022 as a pie shop.

In which waters is Maverick's carrier sailing when Top Gun begins?

The Indian Ocean. The film returns there for its finale, when Maverick is flown back to the ship to cover the rescue of a stricken vessel.

In 2011, which country's state TV was accused of passing off Top Gun footage as its own air force drill?

China. Viewers online recognised the shot in a news report on an air force exercise, and the state broadcaster pulled the clip from its website.

The Navy pilot who buzzed the tower for Top Gun's cameras later made his name at which organisation?

NASA. Scott Altman flew four Space Shuttle missions and led the last one to repair the Hubble telescope; in the film he also flies upside down over the MiG.

Top Gun's low-level flying over land was filmed at a Navy air base at Fallon, in which state?

Nevada. About twenty Navy pilots flew for the cameras there, and the crew followed the jets from the ground with a tracking system borrowed from the Air Force.

Which critic dismissed Top Gun as 'a shiny homoerotic commercial'?

Pauline Kael. The New Yorker critic wrote that the film reduced masculinity to how a young man looks with his clothes half off; audiences made it the year's biggest hit regardless.

Art Scholl died filming which manoeuvre for Top Gun?

A spin. The stunt pilot entered it on purpose, with cameras aboard his own biplane, and never pulled out; neither he nor the wreckage was recovered, and the film is dedicated to him.

Why does Charlie wear a cap in Top Gun's elevator scene?

To hide her hair colour. The scene was added months after the shoot, when preview audiences wanted more romance, and by then the actress had cut and darkened her hair for another film.

The San Diego barbecue joint where Maverick and Goose sing at the piano is named after which place?

Kansas City. The Kansas City Barbeque filled with props from the film, and when a kitchen fire gutted it in 2008 the piano from the scene survived.

Which band's 'Take My Breath Away' won the Academy Award for Best Original Song?

Berlin. The words came from Tom Whitlock, a mechanic who fixed the composer's Ferrari and mentioned, by the way, that he also wrote lyrics.

Who performs 'Danger Zone' on the soundtrack?

Kenny Loggins. He was in the studio recording another song for the film when the producers, suddenly short of a singer, offered it to him, and he said yes on the spot.

Which band was originally meant to record Top Gun's 'Danger Zone'?

Toto. The band fell out with the film's producers, and Only You, the ballad it had written for the film, went unused too, surfacing years later on one of its own albums.

Which singer refused to let Top Gun use one of his songs?

Bryan Adams. He thought the film glorified war, so he kept his song Only the Strong Survive off the soundtrack.

Who composed Top Gun's score, including the 'Top Gun Anthem'?

Harold Faltermeyer. The man behind Beverly Hills Cop's Axel F won a Grammy for the Anthem with guitarist Steve Stevens and came back 36 years later for the sequel's score.

Which song plays on the jukebox in Top Gun's final bar scene, as Maverick and Charlie reunite?

You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'. It is the song Maverick sang to Charlie in a bar on the night they met, so the jukebox tells him she has come back.

Which actor plays Goose's grown-up son, 'Rooster', in the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick?

Miles Teller. He beat Glen Powell to the part, and the film-makers liked Powell so much that they enlarged another pilot's role to keep him.

Top Gun reached US cinemas a week before which holiday weekend?

Memorial Day. The original opened on May 16, 1986; the 2022 sequel chose the holiday weekend itself and broke its four-day opening record.

Top Gun's record-selling VHS tape opened with a commercial for which soft drink?

Diet Pepsi. With the advert attached, the tape went on sale at $26.95, the lowest launch price yet for a major film, and sold 2.9 million copies.

Who named Top Gun to the National Film Registry?

The Library of Congress. It names 25 films a year, and Top Gun's 2015 batch also held a five-second Edison film of a man sneezing, made in 1894.

Which 1991 comedy spoofed Top Gun?

Hot Shots! Charlie Sheen plays the pilot Topper Harley, and its carrier crews load suitcases onto the jets and roast marshmallows in the engine flames.

Which line is number 94 on the AFI's 100 movie quotes?

I feel the need—the need for speed. Maverick starts the line and Goose joins in, so the two of them finish it together.

Which director pops up in the 1994 film Sleep with Me to give a speech about Top Gun's subtext?

Quentin Tarantino. Playing a party guest, he argues at manic length that the film is about a man fighting his own sexuality; Roger Ebert found it more plausible the longer he talked.

Which Italian producer composed both 'Danger Zone' and 'Take My Breath Away' for Top Gun?

Giorgio Moroder. Danger Zone came first, and the producers liked it so much that they asked him for a slow song too, the one that won him his third Oscar.

Which 2013 animated film features the Iceman and Goose actors in a Top Gun homage?

Planes. Made as a straight-to-video offshoot of Cars, it was promoted to cinemas, and the two actors voice a pair of Navy fighter jets called Bravo and Echo.

Which 1991 Navy scandal did official investigators partly blame on the culture shown in Top Gun?

Tailhook. Dozens of women were assaulted at a naval aviators' convention in Las Vegas, and investigators said the film had fed the fliers' idea of how to behave.

Who directed the 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick?

Joseph Kosinski. He had directed Cruise in the sci-fi film Oblivion, and he dedicated the sequel to the memory of the first film's director.