VanDamme's CYBORG - anyone notice this weirdness?

[Archivist]

I first saw Cyborg when it came out on video in the 80's, and it was a real Golan Globus b-grade classic.  I recently picked up a cheap copy of the DVD and was rewarded with a deep sense of nostagia and fun.

And I was *deeply* surprised to read the names of the characters for the first time:

VanDamme is called 'Gibson Rickenbacker', and other characters have names like 'Fender Tremolo', 'Marshall Strat' and 'Pearl Prophet'.  Did the scriptwriter have a bizarre sense of humour?  Did the cast members know they were named after electric guitars, amplifiers, basses and synthesizers???  I just checked IMDB, and while they list this as trivia, I've not seen anyone else comment about it.

Has anyone else noticed this, and if so, do you know anything more about this truly weird thing?

~Archivist~

[dean]

Never noticed this, mainly because for these sort of movies, character names are not important, and the only reason why I remember Fender is the bad guys name is because Van Damme gets muttering it at whim.

But that is surely one funny fact!  I guess the multiple re-writes played havoc with the character names [wasn't this supposed to be the sequel to Masters of the Universe at one stage?]

Either way, whoever named them has a great sense of humour.

[Gerry]

I had never picked up on on that either, and I've watched the movie maybe a dozen times (it's a guilty pleasure).  Of course, I don't know much about guitars either though.

[Shadowphile]

Missed it completely and I usually look for 'in' jokes like that....

The new King Kong for example has a reference to 'Fae' being unavailable because she was making a picture for RKO.  'Fae' was, of course, Fae Wray and the movie she would have been making at that point would have been the original King Kong.....

[Ash]

I've never seen "Cyborg".

It's one of the only Van Damme movies I haven't seen.

[Neon Noodle]

Yeah, I remember a guitar buddy of mine mentioning this - Gibson Vs. Fender.

Wow Ash, amazed you haven't seen this one!
That's almost like a Christian saying "yeah, I've heard about this Bible thing but I haven't read it yet".

Quite the bad movie classic.

The sequel has Jack Palance and Angelina Jolie, another good rental.