The main character in Wordspeaker was named Roger "Mad Dog" Welles. This was a composite of
Roger Corman and
Orson Welles. There were some people suspecting that the character was based on Bob "Mad Dog" Lassiter, a controversial talk show host who died of bladder and kidney cancer. It is also coincidental that Roger "Mad Dog" Welles worked at Omega Radio in the film and later Clyde Lewis got a job at KXL/KUFO in Portland, Oregon, which was owned by Alpha broadcasting two years after the film was made.