[3] The book was adapted into the 1978 film Who'll Stop the Rain starring Nick Nolte with a script co-written by Stone.

[4] Dog Soldiers deals with the fall of the counterculture in America, the rise of mass cynicism and the end of the optimism of the 1960s.

Once an all-American marine, now a lone wolf, Hicks is a survivalist and an autodidact trying to apply to himself Zen Buddhism, martial arts and the philosophy of Nietzsche.

Marge is a painkiller junkie and guilt-ridden mother who takes tickets at a porn theater because it is ironic; she presents herself as an advocate of freedom, both sexual and of speech.

[5] Numerous details from the novel are based on Cassady and his exploits[citation needed] and the environs of Ken Kesey's home in La Honda, California, an informal commune depicted in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Allen Ginsberg.