Trivia

In a TVO (Ontario, Canada) interview, the producer said that this film did terrific box office in New York, Toronto, London and Paris--all cities with subways--but was considered a flop in the rest of the world.

One of Robert Shaw's favorite pastimes during breaks in filming was playing ping-pong on tables set up on the station's concourse. He reportedly badly beat all challengers.

Since the film's release, no #6 train has ever been scheduled to leave Pelham Bay Park Station at either 13:23 or 01:23 by the New York City Transit Authority. This was the practice for many years until the policy was discontinued. Trains are still not scheduled to leave the Pelham Bay Park Station at either 1.23 am or pm.

The reason for the large gap between the subway cars and the platform is that a large portion of the underground scenes was filmed on the unused Court St. stub of the IND subway, which uses wider cars than the IRT cars used in the film.

Lee Wallace, who plays the mayor of New York in this film, bears a striking resemblance to the real mayor Ed Koch. Many reviewers thought he was playing Koch, but Koch would not be the mayor for another four years.