Trivia / The Karate Kid (1984)

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• Actor-Inspired Element: Pat Morita himself designed the bonsai logo that was sewed onto Daniel's gi.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Whatever the parodies might tell you, "You're the Best" is played over a montage of tournament fights, not a Training Montage.
• Cast the Expert:
  • The referee in the final match is Pat E. Johnson, a karate expert and former student of Chuck Norris. He instructed many movie stars in karate. He is credited as the "fight instructor/choreographer" for the film.
  • Darryl Vidal, who played Johnny's semi-final opponent and stunt-doubled for Pat Morita doing the crane kick, is a black belt in karate.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Elisabeth Shue actually grew up playing soccer. She played with the boys as long as she could before finally taking up gymnastics.
  • Ron Thomas (Bobby Brown) was so skilled in martial arts (black belt in Jiu-Jitsu) that he was allowed to choreograph his own fight scenes.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Initially released as Le moment de vérité (The Moment of Truth) in France. The title didn't stick, and Karaté Kid rapidly replaced it first in most viewers' minds, then with re-releases.
  • In Japan and South Korea, this film and the entire franchise was released under the title Best Kid ("ベスト・キッド" in Japanese and "베스트 키드" in Korean) instead of The Karate Kid.
• The Danza: Darryl Vidal, Johnny's opponent in the semifinals, is played by Darryl Vidal.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Ralph Macchio was 21 when the first film was made, playing a 17 year old. Not many people noticed thanks to Macchio's boyish good looks and high-pitched voice,^note although Macchio himself was very uncomfortable being romantically paired with the 16-year-old Robyn Lively in the third movie making this one of the few effective examples of the trope. Avoided in the reboot, as the kids are actual kids. Poked fun at in a 90's commercial for Brisk Iced Tea.
  "Daniel-San": Kid? I'm 35.
  • The same goes for the actors playing the 17 year old Cobra Kais. William Zabka was 19, Ron Thomas was 22, and Chad McQueen, Rob Garrison, and Tony O'Dell were all 23.
• Deleted Scene: There were two confrontations between Daniel and Johnny which were eventually cut from the film (though are alluded to in Cobra Kai, meaning they're still very much canon):
  • The first takes place in the school cafeteria just after Daniel has bought lunch for Ali. Seeing them about to take a seat, Johnny hurries over just in time to sneak a piece of blueberry pie onto Daniel's chair. Standing up with his pants covered in blueberries, Daniel is equally embarrassed and livid. In a brave act of revenge, Daniel smears what is left of the pie across Johnny's shirt and mayhem ensues. A photo from this scene can be found on the back of the novelisation.
  • The other scene occurs later in the film and also takes place at school. Coming up from a drink at the fountain, Daniel finds himself face to face with Johnny (who came to give him the entry form for the tournament) and stands up for himself once again by questioning the practices of the Cobra Kai.
• Enforced Method Acting: To make the All-Valley tournament feel more authentic, the production team hosted a real karate tournament on the set at the same time they were filming the characters' fight scenes. All of the background fighters were actually competing.
• Executive Meddling: Thankfully avoided. The studio demanded that the quiet scene in which Daniel discovers a drunken Miyagi mourning his lost wife and child, who died in a relocation camp while he was away being a war hero in Italy during World War II, be cut because it "disrupted the flow of the movie". The director apparently went to war to keep it in the film. Pat Morita would later say that it was this scene that earned him an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Mr. Miyagi. (Ralph Macchio disagrees, citing his presence in the entire film as the reason.)
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • William Zabka (Johnny) had no martial arts experience prior to being cast in the film, except being an accomplished wrestler.
  • Pat Morita was American born and native English speaker. He auditioned a second time after working on a thicker Japanese accent. He also didn't know karate, with much of it being done by stunt doubles.
• Life Imitates Art: The Awesome, but Impractical Crane Kick/Technique/Stance was done for real during the K.O. finish of the Lyoto Machida vs. Randy Couture fight, thus making it more plausible than previously thought.
• On-Set Injury: During the Halloween dance fight in The Karate Kid, William Zabka ended up hitting Ralph Macchio in the jaw with a roundhouse at full-force partly because they were rushed with a crunched-for-time shooting schedule due to being a night shoot. Macchio had to spend three days eating meals through a straw.
• Real-Life Relative: Elisabeth Shue's younger brother Andrew has a small part as one of the participants at the karate tournament. If you look closely he can be seen in the background while Daniel is squaring off against some of the other participants at the tournament.
• Referenced by...:
  • Crayon Shin-chan has a story arc, "Kendo dojo" where Shin-Chan trains under a budding kendo trainee named Kenta Musashino before partaking in the Kasukabe Kendo Championship. The entire arc is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Karate Kid (but with kendo instead of karate), including having Shin-Chan snatch a housefly with chopsticks, a Training Montage lifted straight from the film and the "Wax On, Wax Off" line being name-dropped.
• Scully Box: The crew had Pat Morita stand on a 4-inch box so they could fit him into the face-to-face shot.
• Sleeper Hit: The studio did not have high expectations for The Karate Kid, but it ended up becoming the biggest sleeper hit of 1984; earning over $100 million in the United States and Canada on a $8 million budget. When Cobra Kai debuted in 2018 it resulted in renewed interest in the original film, and The Karate Kid earned another $400,000 in limited theatrical re-releases across the United States and Canada.
• Star-Making Role: For Ralph Macchio. Subverted with Elisabeth Shue as she was the leading lady, not the star, an important distinction. This was the first film for the latter after doing several commercials in the early 1980s beforehand. After the success of The Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio became a teen idol who was often featured on the covers of magazines like Tiger Beat" and would be later referenced as such in Stranger Things''.
• Throw It In!: The song drunkenly sung by Mr. Miyagi was one he heard when he was a child. This even gets worked into the second movie as being Miyagi and Yukie's old song.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Daniel's last name was originally Webber, and it was only changed to LaRusso after Ralph Macchio was cast.
  • The role of Daniel LaRusso was allegedly initially offered to Sean Penn. Since he was trying for more adult roles he turned it down. C. Thomas Howell and Charlie Sheen also turned it down.
  • Toshiro Mifune auditioned for Mr. Miyagi. Although he was great in the audition (according to director John G. Avildsen in the DVD Commentary), it was felt that his version of Miyagi was "too serious" - and too scary - and played much like the samurai warriors he played in the Akira Kurosawa movies and he was turned down. His English was also quite poor at the time, which would have required him to learn most of his lines phonetically.
  • Mako was offered the role of Mr. Miyagi but he turned it down to do Conan the Destroyer. He did eventually play a similar character in Sidekicks.
  • Crispin Glover was considered for Johnny Lawrence before William Zabka was cast.
  • A scene was filmed but ultimately deleted where Bobby confronts Kreese immediately after injuring Daniel and quits Cobra Kai by taking off his black belt, throwing it to the ground, and leaving the tournament. Unlike the other deleted scenes, this isn't considered canon as Bobby is still shown with the group in the beginning of The Karate Kid Part II and Cobra Kai confirms he quit at the same time as Johnny and the others following the events of that film.
• Word of Saint Paul: According to the commentary track on the home video versions of the movie, William Zabka came up with a loose backstory for Johnny Lawrence, in order to better "get the feel" for playing the character. He states in the commentary that he envisioned Johnny as having no father, and that Kreese is the closest thing to a father figure he had in his life. Cobra Kai would turn this all into official canon, with a few extra details added in.
• Working Title: John G. Avildsen originally planned to call the movie East Meets West in West.

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