49 Fun Facts About War Games

Who stars as teenage hacker David Lightman in the 1983 film WarGames?

Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman; the writers modelled the character on David Scott Lewis, a real hacking enthusiast they had met while researching the script.

Who directed WarGames after its original director was fired early in shooting?

John Badham, who had directed Saturday Night Fever, took over; he loosened up the two stiff young leads by having them race him around the sound stage.

Which director was fired from WarGames a few weeks into shooting?

Martin Brest was dismissed by the producers early in shooting; he went on to direct Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 and Midnight Run in 1988.

Who portrays Jennifer Mack, David's classmate, in WarGames?

Ally Sheedy plays Jennifer Mack; WarGames opened in 1983, two years before The Breakfast Club made her a full member of the Brat Pack.

Who portrays NORAD systems chief Dr. John McKittrick?

Dabney Coleman plays Dr. John McKittrick, who argues for automating missile launches after a drill in which many silo crews refused to turn their keys.

Which English actor portrays reclusive scientist Stephen Falken and also voices WOPR?

John Wood, an English stage actor who won a Tony for Travesties, plays Falken; his electronically treated voice also supplies the computer's lines.

Which former Beatle wanted the role of Falken while the WarGames script was in development?

John Lennon had shown interest in playing Falken; he was shot dead in New York in December 1980, while the script was still being developed.

Barry Corbin's General Beringer was based on which real USAF general the writers met at the base?

Hartinger was then commander-in-chief of the real NORAD.

What does the acronym WOPR stand for in WarGames?

The director coined it to sound like the Whopper hamburger, thinking NORAD's real Single Integrated Operational Plan sounded boring.

An early draft's version of the computer was a space-based defensive laser nicknamed what?

OLI stood for Omnipresent Laser Interceptor; the idea was dropped as too speculative.

The writers' first 1979 script, before hacking entered the story, was called what?

The Genius was about a dying scientist and the rebellious kid who alone understands him, an idea sparked by a television documentary about a physicist.

What machine does David use to change his grades and dial into WOPR?

David's computer is an IMSAI 8080, a 1970s S-100 bus microcomputer with front-panel toggle switches, which he connects to the phone line through an acoustic-coupler modem.

In which California town is David dialling every phone number when he stumbles onto WOPR?

David scans every number in Sunnyvale hunting for Protovision, a games company, and instead reaches an unidentified computer that offers him a list of games.

What is the backdoor password that gets David into WOPR?

The password is Joshua, the name of Falken's dead son; David's hacker friends Jim and Malvin had explained that programmers leave such backdoors into their systems.

Which game does David pick from the list, setting off the crisis?

David chooses Global Thermonuclear War and plays the Soviet side, targeting American cities; the same menu also listed chess, checkers and poker.

WOPR sits inside which real military installation in Colorado?

NORAD's command centre in the film is inside Cheyenne Mountain; the set built for it, with its huge video wall, was far grander than the real facility then was.

After escaping NORAD, David and Jennifer find Falken living under an assumed name where?

An island off the Oregon coast is where Falken lives under the name Robert Hume, having resigned himself to nuclear war as inevitable.

How does David slip out of NORAD after being detained?

By joining a tourist group leaving the complex, David walks out of NORAD after slipping away from the infirmary where he was being held as a suspected spy.

Which three American bases report back unharmed, proving the Soviet strike is fake?

NORAD had been persuaded to ride out the supposed strike until real impacts were confirmed.

Why can't NORAD simply unplug WOPR when it starts trying to launch on its own?

A fail-deadly system would fire all the missiles, NORAD's staff warn: the computer would read a shutdown as the destruction of NORAD and launch, the silo crews having already been replaced.

Which game do Falken and David make WOPR face itself at, to teach it futility?

Falken and David set the computer to play Tic-tac-toe against itself; after a long run of draws it simulates every nuclear scenario, finds no winner and gives up.

WOPR concludes that nuclear war is "a strange game" in which the only winning move is what?

The computer's verdict is 'Not to play': having found every nuclear exchange unwinnable, it relinquishes control and asks, "How about a nice game of chess?"

WarGames grossed about $125M worldwide against a budget of roughly how much?

The budget was about $12M; WarGames earned $79.6 million domestically, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1983 in the U.S. and Canada.

Which of these was one of WarGames' three Oscar nominations?

WarGames was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Sound at the 1984 Oscars; it won the BAFTA for Best Sound.

Which critic gave WarGames four out of four stars and called it "an amazingly entertaining thriller"?

Roger Ebert reviewed WarGames for the Chicago Sun-Times, awarding four stars out of four and calling it "an amazingly entertaining thriller".

Which president watched WarGames, asked the Joint Chiefs whether it could happen, and ordered a security review?

Ronald Reagan saw the film at Camp David in June 1983 and asked General John Vessey whether it could happen; the reply a week later was that the problem was worse than he thought.

The film helped prompt NSDD-145 (1984), the first presidential directive on what?

Computer security was the subject of NSDD-145, signed in September 1984 as the National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security; Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986.

Which term for scanning phone numbers with a modem did WarGames inspire?

Wardialing, automatically dialling blocks of numbers to find modems, took its name from the film's scanning scene, replacing the older term demon dialing; wardriving for Wi-Fi followed.

Which Milwaukee teenage hacker group broke into Los Alamos computers in the summer of 1983?

The 414s, Milwaukee teenagers named for their area code, broke into systems including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1983, drawing FBI attention.

The 2008 direct-to-DVD sequel WarGames: The Dead Code pits a hacker against a supercomputer called what?

The sequel's computer is RIPLEY, a government system that flags the hacker played by Matt Lanter as a terrorist; the original film returned to cinemas for a single 25th-anniversary night.

The 1983 WarGames video game was first released on which console?

Coleco published the WarGames game for its own ColecoVision in 1983; the player defends American cities against incoming missiles, and Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 versions followed in 1984.

Which 2006 Introversion strategy game was inspired by WarGames?

DEFCON, released by Introversion Software in 2006, recreates the film's glowing vector map of a nuclear exchange, with players scoring by the millions of enemy civilians killed.

Who was the creative lead of the 2018 interactive series #WarGames?

Sam Barlow, designer of Her Story, created the 2018 series #WarGames for Eko, the interactive video company previously called Interlude.

Who composed the WarGames score?

Arthur B. Rubinstein, the regular composer for the film's director, also scored Blue Thunder the same year; the original WarGames soundtrack album appeared on Polydor.

The animations on the NORAD screens were made on which company's hardware and vector displays?

Colin Cantwell created the NORAD screen graphics on Hewlett-Packard computers with vector displays; each frame took about a minute, and the footage was projected live from behind the screens.

Which actor plays Malvin, one of David's two hacker friends?

Eddie Deezen, the nerd specialist of Grease and 1941, plays Malvin opposite Maury Chaykin's Jim; the pair tell David how programmers leave backdoors into systems.

Which Soviet officer judged the 1983 launch warning a glitch, months after WarGames opened?

Stanislav Petrov, the duty officer at the Serpukhov-15 bunker on 26 September 1983, reasoned that five apparent launches made no sense as a first strike and reported a malfunction.

The Soviet satellite network behind the September 1983 false alarm was code-named what?

The Oko early-warning satellites mistook sunlight glinting off high-altitude clouds for five missile launches; ground radar saw nothing and the alert was judged false.

Which November 1983 NATO exercise convinced some Soviet leaders a first strike was coming?

Able Archer 83, run from 7 to 11 November 1983, rehearsed escalation to nuclear release with new coded traffic and radio silences, so realistically that Soviet units in East Germany were put on alert.

The 1983 NATO scare exercise was coordinated from SHAPE headquarters in which country?

SHAPE, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, has been based at Casteau near Mons in Belgium since moving from France in 1967; the exercise was run from there.

Kriegsspiel, the first wargame adopted by a real army for training, was developed by which country?

Prussia developed Kriegsspiel: Georg von Reisswitz's 1824 version was adopted by the Prussian army, and after its victory over France in 1871 other armies rushed to copy it; the word means wargame.

In Kriegsspiel, who moves the blocks on the map after reading each team's written orders?

The umpire keeps the rules flexible and manages hidden information, which is what set it apart from chess-like predecessors.

The 1812 prototype that Reisswitz Sr. presented to the king had a battlefield made of what?

His earlier experiments used a table of damp sand sculpted into hills; the tiles came with a cabinet of drawers holding all the pieces.

Millennium Challenge 2002, the largest U.S. war game to that date, cost about how much?

Millennium Challenge 2002 cost about $250M; it involved some 13,500 personnel, two years of planning, and mixed live manoeuvres with computer simulation in a scenario set in 2007.

In Millennium Challenge 2002, how many Blue warships did Paul Van Riper's Red force sink in one salvo?

Van Riper's swarm of small boats and cruise missiles sank 16 Blue ships, including an aircraft carrier; he had used motorcycle couriers to dodge electronic eavesdropping, and the fleet was then 'refloated'.

In which city is David Lightman a high-school student in WarGames?

David lives in Seattle with his parents and attends high school there, where he uses his home computer to alter his biology grade on the school's system.

Which RAND expert told the writers a secure military computer might still allow remote access?

Willis Ware, a RAND computer-security pioneer, told the writers that military systems were typically designed so their programmers could dial in from home at weekends, a loophole that became the backdoor plot.

Who was the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of WarGames?

William A. Fraker photographed WarGames and earned one of his six Oscar nominations for it; he had also shot Rosemary's Baby and Bullitt.

On what date did MGM/UA release WarGames in the United States, after its Cannes premiere?

MGM/UA opened WarGames in the United States on June 3, 1983, a few weeks after its out-of-competition screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May.