History Trivia / SevenSamurai

** Yoshio Tsuchiya (Rikichi) got badly scorched and blistered by fire in the scene where Rikichi, Heihachi and Kikuchiyo were setting fire to the bandits' camp, and fainted from a blast of flame during filming. Yukiko Shimazaki, who played Rikichi's wife, also got her face covered in blisters while filming that scene as well.

** The simultaneous production of this and ''Film/{{Gojira}}'' nearly forced Toho into bankruptcy.

* CastTheRunnerUp: Creator/ToshiroMifune would have played Kyuzo when there were just six samurai, but when Kikuchiyo was created as a last-minute addition to the script, the part of Kyuzo went to Seiji Miyaguchi while Mifune was recast as Kikuchiyo.

** Creator/AkiraKurosawa did not get along well with Yoshio Inaba (Gorobei), deriding him and yelling at him for most of the shoot. Although Inaba appeared in a minor role in Kurosawa's ''Film/ThroneOfBlood'', he apparently found the experience of shooting this film so stressful that he limited the amount of film work he did after it.

** Seiji Miyaguchi, who played the taciturn samurai Kyuzo, had not touched a sword at all before this movie. Editing and careful cinematography were both used to give the impression that he was a master. Miyaguchi had been given a crash course and was so exhausted he could hardly move by the time filming started.

* TroubledProduction: The film was tough to make because of Creator/AkiraKurosawa's demanding directing style and disputes with the actors. Almost all the actors except for Toshiro Mifune, who got into arguments with Kurosawa constantly, were scared of him; poor Yoshio Inaba (Gorobei) was yelled at constantly for blowing his lines. Kamatari Fujiwara insisted on playing Manzo comically when Kurosawa wanted him to play the part more seriously, until he realized later that Fujiwara had the right idea and allowed him to play the character how he wanted.

** The original plan was for ''six'' samurai, but Kurosawa and the scriptwriters felt that the six serious characters they had were "a bore", so they introduced the hammy, comedic Kikuchiyo to contrast with them and cast Toshiro Mifune in the role (Mifune having originally been cast as Kyuzo).

* CreatorChosenCasting: Takashi Shimura was Creator/AkiraKurosawa's first and only choice for Kambei.

* DuelingMovies: With ''Film/Godzilla1954'' another high-budget Creator/{{Toho}} epic released around the same time. Despite this, the directors of both movies were close friends.

* WriterOnBoard: Kikuchiyo, [[spoiler:a farmer's son, not a samurai]], dissuades the other samurai from blaming the villagers for killing and stealing from samurai in the past; after all, it was samurai rule that had forced them to live that way. This is widely seen as Creator/AkiraKurosawa apologizing; he came from a family with samurai ancestors.

* ProductionPosse: All the Creator/AkiraKurosawa regulars are here: Creator/ToshiroMifune, Creator/DaisukeKato, Creator/TakashiShimura, Creator/MinoruChiaki, Creator/KamatariFujiwara, Creator/EijiroTono, Creator/YoshioTsuchiya, and even a young Creator/TatsuyaNakadai in an uncredited cameo.

* ExecutiveMeddling: Toho Studios originally cut 50 minutes off the film when screening it for American distributors for fear that no American audience would be willing to sit through the entire picture.

* ProductionPosse: All the Creator/AkiraKurosawa regulars are here: Creator/ToshiroMifune, Creator/DaisukeKato, Creator/TakashiShimura, Creator/MinoruChiaki, Creator/KamatariFujiwara, Creator/EijiroTono and Creator/YoshioTsuchiya.