 Another reason for cutting the custard pie fight at the end of the  film was that at one point, President Muffley took a pie in the face  and fell down, prompting Gen. Turgidson to cry, "Gentlemen! Our  gallant young president has just been struck down in his prime!"  Stanley Kubrick (qv) had already decided to cut the pie fight by  the time of President John F. Kennedy (qv)s assassination, but  this line (or possibly even the whole sequence) would certainly have  been cut anyway due to its eerie similarity to real events.