The Right Stuff/Trivia


 * Creator Killer: Despite being a critical success, the movie was a financial failure. This, along with Twice Upon a Time and Once Upon a Time in America, own failure to earn money at the box office, sent The Ladd Company into oblivion for about a decade. The company rebounds.
 * Fatal Method Acting: The stuntman portraying Chuck Yeager's bailout of the crashing F-104. His helmet filled with smoke, and he didn't get his parachute deployed. Also a strange bit of Truth in Television, as Yeager actually collided with his seat after ejecting, and his helmet filled with liquid explosive materials, similarly filling his helmet with smoke and burning his face to a cinder. The aftermath is portrayed in the Out of the Inferno shot listed below.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Only applies to Cincinnati Bengals fans. Gonzalez is played by Anthony Munoz, who was an All-Pro offensive lineman at the time.
 * John Glenn would later beat his wife back to life.
 * And return to the space program.
 * Jeff Goldblum appears as one of the White House staffers.
 * Reality Subtext:
 * Towards the end of the movie, Alan Shepard tells his wife Louise, in a "one of these days..." manner, "I'm going to the moon...". Shepard would be the only one of the Mercury Seven who would go to the moon, on Apollo 14.
 * During the astronaut tryouts in the movie, Gordon Cooper gloats about breaking the record for holding one's breath, only to realize that John Glenn and Scott Carpenter are still going after he's done. In real life, Cooper did hold his breath the longest, since he was the only non-smoker in the Mercury Seven.
 * At the movie's end, before Cooper lifts off on his mission, he's shown dozing off. Cooper was the first astronaut to sleep in outer space.