Rocky V attempts to regain some of the original’s simplicity and emphasis on character. Both of those elements had become increasingly rare during the prior two sequels.  To increase the reality factor, Sage Stallone, Sly's 14-year-old son in real life, was cast as his onscreen son, Rocky Jr.

On the lookout for an actor to portray Rocky's rival, Sylvester Stallone spotted the young Tommy Morrison during a boxing match in 1989.  Morrison was an actual fighter of modest repute who made his one and only screen performance in this film. Tommy recalls, “Stallone got a hold of Bill Cayton, my manager, and Cayton and I flew out to Los Angeles. We went to the screen test, and then I went back home. About a week or ten days later, Stallone called and left a message on my answering machine telling me that they were going to use me and congratulated me.”

Morrison made good with his role as Tommy Gunn, and many movie critics praised Rocky V as a return to the glory of Rocky and II. It had been complained that Rocky III and IV had turned Rocky into a caricature, fighting against villains like Clubber Lang and Ivan Drago. Morrison’s performance in the movie brought a more realistic feel to the movie, and certainly helped his own marketability as a rising boxing heavyweight. 

Like Morrison, Michael Williams, the actor who portrayed fighter Union Cane, was a real-life boxer. Though he hardly spoke in the movie, he and Morrison were set to have an actual match about a month after Rocky V was released, but the event had to be canceled when Williams was injured. The match was being hyped as "The Real Cane vs. Gunn Match".

The always brilliant Burgess Meredith made his fourth and final appearance here as Mickey - this time in flashback form.  His scene with Stallone is the most heartfelt in the movie and remains one of the most memorable moments.  It is here, perhaps for the first time in the entire series, that the audience catches a poignant glimpse of the grizzly Mickey's love for young Rocky.

Another interesting side note regarding V's cast: Jodi Letizia, who played the tough street kid " Marie" in the original Rocky, was supposed to have reprised her role in this film. Her character was shown to have ended up as Rocky predicted she would: a whore, but the scene ended up on the cutting room floor.

And the scene that never made it to the lens, let alone the cutting room floor, was the ending that Stallone had originally scripted.  Initially, his script intended for Rocky to die after defeating Tommy Gunn in their streetfight, however he had second thoughts and rewrote the ending, claiming "it would be like killing off Superman".