Jeff Bridges' character Bill Django is based on Army Lt. Col. James Channon, who wrote the First Earth Battalion field manual. In the mid-'70s Channon took a leave of absence (with pay) from the army to go on a fact-finding tour of the New Age Movement, before coming back and writing the First Earth Battalion manual. The movie combines two or three separate programs: the Army's Remote Viewing program (run by the army's Intelligence and Security Command); the "Jedi" program run by the Special Forces; and Channon's First Earth Battalion (which was a concept and a field manual rather than an operational unit).
George Clooney's character, Lyn Cassady, appears to be based partly on the US military's top Remote Viewer Joe McMoneagle, and RV Project Database Manager Lyn Buchanan. A scene where information on a missing general is provided by Cassady in a Remote Viewing session is likely drawn from inspiration from McMoneagle's partly successful attempt to RV kidnap US Brig. Gen. Dozier's location in Padua, Italy (1981). The scene where computer systems are destroyed, seemingly by Lyn, resulting in his initial recruitment by Gen. Hopgood, is very close to fact.
The "Evolutionary Tactics" field manual shown is the actual one created by James Channon in 1978 for the U.S. Army.
The advertising poster is a spoof of a frequently used style for movie posters. Instead of trying to communicate anything about the plot or content of the film, it just contains multiple stacked faces of the stars. On this poster the last face visible in the row is a goat's, and the billing line above their photos reads, "George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, and Goat." It's also a reference to the iconic drawing posters from the Soviet communist era, showing profiles of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin (in some eras or world regions, often completed by profiles of Joseph Stalin or Zedong Mao).
Exterior shots of Ft. Bragg were filmed at The New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, NM.