Actor-Inspired Element: Shosanna's film for the Nazis was originally going to be in French. Melanie Laurent felt it would have more of an impact if it was in English, and it was changed as a result.
Mélanie Laurent really is a French Jew. Her grandfather survived deportation to a concentration camp in World War II. She was pleased with being the "face of Jewish vengeance", and felt he would be happy about it as well. Similarly, both Donny Donowitz and Smithson Utivich, two of the explicitly Jewish Basterds, are respectively portrayed by the equally Jewish Eli Roth and B.J. Novak.
Mike Myers's parents served in the British Armed Forces
Awesome, Dear Boy: Til Schweiger had previously refused to wear Nazi uniforms in roles before this film. He took the role of Hugo Stiglitz because he'd get to kill Nazis in the film.
Banned Episode: Averted. This is of the very few films from The Weinstein Company to still air on television, due to its international and home video rights being owned by Universal.
Blooper: When Donny kills the German Sergeant, his head is briefly seen splitting completely open. In the following shots, not only is the Sergeant's head intact but there's barely a drop of blood on him.
At his audition in Berlin, Michael Fassbender inquired about playing Colonel Hans Landa. Quentin Tarantino replied, "Look, man, any guy that gets cast as Heathcliff is not fucking German enough to play my Landa, all right?"
Til Schweiger was given a choice of roles: either Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz or Corporal Wilhelm Wicki. He chose the former.
Daniel Brühl was offered the roles of Major Dieter Hellstrom and Staff Sergeant Wilhelm Wicki before being cast as Private First Class Fredrick Zoller.
Christoph Waltz and Diane Kruger are both fluent in English and French in addition to their native German. Waltz speaks all three in the film, in addition to Italian. He speaks some Hebrew, too. Kruger speaks English and German alternately throughout the film, and had to affect a thick German accent because her natural speech nearly lacks one.
Michael Fassbender is half German on his father's side and does speak some German in real life (though by his own admission not as good as English), which helped him playing a Fake Brit spy who tries to infiltrate among Germans.
Darkhorse Casting: Melanie Laurent almost didn't get the role of Shosanna because Quentin Tarantino was worried by her fame in France, saying he wanted to "discover" someone. She assured him she wasn't so famous, and won the part.
Cloris Leachman filmed a scene as an elderly Jewish woman living in Boston who autographs Donny's baseball bat. Although the scene was cut, Quentin has said he might use it in the prequel.
Maggie Cheung was cast as Madame Mimieux, the original owner of Shoshanna's cinema. She too was cut from the finished film.
Dyeing for Your Art: Eli Roth put on thirty pounds of muscle to play the Bear Jew. He also learned to cut hair for the role from producer Pilar Savone's father Umberto at his salon in Beverly Hills.
In the scene where Von Hammersmark is strangled to death by Hans Landa, Quentin Tarantino decided to strangle her himself with his own hands during close-up scenes of her face, in order to add realism to her death. He strangled Diane Kruger so hard that she ACTUALLY passed out. And it worked.
Eli Roth has stated that Tarantino repeatedly delayed filming the scene in which Donowitz beats a Nazi officer to death, knowing that the delays would increasingly annoy Roth, and thus heighten his intensity in the scene.
Extremely Lengthy Creation: Quentin Tarantino spent just over a decade writing the script because, as he told Charlie Rose in an interview, he became "too precious about the page", meaning the story kept growing and expanding.
Mike Myers plays another quintessential Brit, General Fenech, but is the Canadian-born son of English parents, and holds Canadian, British, and American citizenship.
Fake Nationality: The majority of the characters are played by actors of the same nationality as their roles, as a deliberate policy. Exceptions, apart from the Fake Brit examples above:
Christian Berkel, who plays a French bartender, is actually German. Berkel, however, partially grew up in France.
The Indian-American Omar Doom plays the Jewish-American soldier Omar Ulmer.
Downplayed with Diane Kruger who is German, like her character. However, years of working in Hollywood caused her to lose most of her accent — so she joked that she had to, ironically, put on a fake accent to make Bridget von Hammersmark sound more German.
Fatal Method Acting: A near miss. During the climactic scene, the fire raging through the cinema was completely real. Unfortunately, it began to get out of hand, and the two actors in the scene were only wearing a jelly to protect their skin; the rest of the crew had fire suits. Ten seconds after Quentin Tarantino called 'cut' and everyone rushed off, the platform the actors had been standing on collapsed. The heat was so intense (2000 degrees Fahrenheit) one of them passed out afterwards.
Melanie Laurent worked as a film projectionist for weeks to prepare for her role.
Eli Roth joked that the period clothing helped make him especially aggressive, saying "wearing wool underwear will make you want to kill anything". His girlfriend also added Hannah Montana music onto his iPod to Troll him, which got him even angrier.
Rod Taylor watched hours of footage featuring Winston Churchill to properly learn his movements and speech patterns.
Shoshanna's introductory scenes are given a Whole-Plot Reference in the music video for "The People Under the Stairs" by Ice Nine Kills.
Inglourious Basterds is one of several films Karolina Żebrowska mentions watching while working on her Snow White dress. She gave it the highest rating of the lot at a 9/10.
The Community episode "Pillows and Blankets" has Chang put together a group called the "Changlorious Basterds", who are a bunch of kids recruited at a bar mitzvah. They make necklaces out of mattress tags, which is treated as Serious Business.
Annie: This is when things get as ugly as they can get... while still being a pillow fight.
Shrug of God: Quentin Tarantino is never going to reveal why he chose to spell the title 'Basterds'.
Similarly Named Works: The "Inglourious Basterds" misspelling was likely to avoid a lawsuit by the copyright holders of the 1978 film "The Inglorious Bastards", which was also a World War II film. Though it might also be a reflection on Raine's education.
Voice-Only Cameo: When Hans Landa makes a deal with an Army representative to assassinate Hitler in exchange for immunity and a reward, he gives the phone to Lt. Aldo Raine, and the voice on the other end briefly tells him where to rendezvous; the voice is Harvey Keitel.
Quentin Tarantino originally sought Leonardo DiCaprio to be cast as Hans Landa, before deciding to have the character played by a native German-speaking actor. A regretful DiCaprio made Tarantino promise to cast him in a later movie — a promise Tarantino kept with his next film, Django Unchained.
Tarantino asked Adam Sandler to play "The Bear Jew" Sgt. Donny Donowitz, but Sandler declined due to schedule conflicts with Funny People. This led to Donowitz being played by Tarantino's real-life best friend, Eli Roth.
At one point, Ennio Morricone was onboard to compose the score, but backed out due to his belief that he would be unable to work efficiently in the amount of time given.
In the screenplay, the first part of the film set in Paris was intended to have been filmed in black and white, using entirely natural lighting, in reference to the French New Wave.
As Quentin has noted, he at one point responded to the length of the material he'd written with a decision to make it a miniseries. As it stands, he's noted that he has enough for a second film, which he may or may not make eventually.
Albert Finney was originally supposed to play Winston Churchill, a role he previously played in the telemovie The Gathering Storm. In fact, when meeting with Tarantino about the part, Rod Taylor recommended him before taking the part himself.
Michael Madsen was slated to appear as a character called Babe Buchinsky, but did not appear in the final film.
Jean Reno was the original choice for Perrier LaPadite.
Nastassja Kinski was in talks for Bridget Von Hammersmark; Tarantino even flew to Germany to meet the actress, but a deal wasn't reached. Diane Kruger actually had to really lobby to even get an audition, as Tarantino wasn't keen on her, including thinking she wasn't actually German. She flew out to Germany at her own expense for the audition, learning thirty pages of dialogue in about two days, including lines in English and German before he was persuaded to cast her.
The original draft of the script had Shoshanna as a far more active member of the French resistance, sniping at Nazis from rooftops and even having a kill list of known German officials. But when Tarantino made Kill Bill, those details were worked into that film, and he felt it was more in character for Shoshanna to keep a low profile.
The original draft also had Wilhelm surviving being shot by Bridget von Hammersmark, and he would tell Landa that she was the double agent.
According to Eddie Murphy, he was in talks with Quentin Tarantino for a role in the film.
In the original script, a Nazi who had a swastika carved onto his forehead during one of the Basterds' previous operations recognizes Donny at the theater.
The original script has a flashback where Donny has his neighbors write the names of relatives who are dead or unaccounted for in the Holocaust on his baseball bat after joining the Army.
In the original script, Utivich poses as the chauffeur of Bridgette and her guests despite not knowing how to drive.
When Ada Mimieux was going to feature in the film, Isabelle Huppert was in talks to play it, but they fell through. Catherine Deneuve was considered, before it was decided to retool the character to be the child of Chinese immigrants and Maggie Cheung was cast.
Vincent Lindon was offered the role of Perrier LaPedite and would have done it, but schedule conflicts with another film Mademoiselle Chambon (which was filming on the same day as his scene) led to Denis Ménochet playing it instead.
that Tarantino repeatedly delayed filming the scene in which Donowitz beats a Nazi officer to death, knowing that the delays would increasingly annoy Roth, and thus heighten his intensity in the scene.