Spider is the fighter Rocky beat in the very first scene of the original film.  Same actor, even.  My friends and I love Spider because Mick screams at Rocky that he's a bum when Rocky describes their fight.

@11:40 the fighter washing the dishes is SPIDER RICO! He was the first fighter Rocky fought in Rocky 1, in the opening scene!

I think rocky takes care spider because he feels that’s who he’d be if he never fought Apollo

"It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward"

Paulie calling Punchy the dog “ugly,” and then EVERY TIME we see him after, he has a new painting he has made with him of Punchy the dog is AMAZING ❤

If you want to see Stallone acting then you should watch Copland. He's on screen with De Niro, Liotta and Keitel and he holds his own.

Paulie's deleted scene from this one REALLY gives insight into Paulie, and is quite, quite heartbreaking.

The credits of this movie are quite fun. It’s just random people having fun running up the museum stairs.

My favorite thing about this movie is that not only did they have Rocky not win, Rocky didn't care if he won or lost at the end of the fight. It wasn't about winning or losing for him. It was about being able to do it. There was an alternate scene filmed where he did win, and it just didn't feel right. Credit to Stallone for realizing that and going with the ending that's in the film.

The turtles of this movie are the same from the original 1976 Rocky. Adrian Balboa was alive in the first few drafts of the script, while Robert Balboa was in the U.S. Air Force, Sylvester Stallone felt that the film lacked the emotional impact it needed, so he and Talia Shire came to an agreement that her character would be dead. Carl Weathers was meant to appear in several flashback scenes but Weathers then filed a lawsuit against Sylvester Stallone and MGM over alleged unpaid royalties from previous Rocky (1976) film. The producers were therefore forbidden from using his image.

The idea for the movie came about when George Foreman came out of retirement and went to win the heavyweight championship again. Ok he was 45 and not the age Rocky was here.
But Stallone said that was his inspiration.

Remember, Rocky was a leg breaker for the mob. That's one of the reasons Mickey was angry and disappointed.

Sylvester Stallone said in an interview. He didn't want to put Adrian's death on film.

Rocky's "tough love talk" to his son hits so hard in the feels

also, Simone and George - I don't know if you guys have heard of your countryman George Chuvalo, but he's probably one of the greatest in the category of Boxers That Most People Haven't Heard Of.

One of the greatest chins of all time (he was never knocked down, and he had close to a hundred professional bouts) and he went up against some of the heaviest hitters of his time - Smokin' Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali (twice!)

After his fight against Ali in '66, he went dancing with his wife while Ali had to go to the hospital because his kidneys were bleeding.

"Rocko! The last round of your life!"
Damn, Paulie delivered that phrase at the very last round and is so fitting, it carries so damn much... this really got me to this day.

His opponent really isn’t an actor, he’s an actual boxer. Former lite heavyweight champion Antonio Carver

This is the one where Paulie's character arc is finally complete. You can see how truly ashamed he is of himself for how he treated Adrian.

This brought the series back to where the first movie started off as

0:20 If you're wondering why people hated Rocky 5, it's not necessarily for the content alone. The reason is that it was intended to be the final Rocky movie and, in that role it kind of fell short. And it stayed that way for 16 years. When Rocky Balboa came out, Rocky 5 then took a more suitable place as an important chapter in the character arc and allowed Rocky Balboa to be a much more suitable finale.

Trivia since you didn't have any: Milo Ventimiglia, who played Rocky's son, was actually born with a portion of his bottom lip paralyzed in the same exact spot as Sylvester Stallone. They didn't know that when they cast him. A lot of people think for this movie he was just trying to mimic Stallone. Crazy coincidence