Trivia / The Diamond Arm

• Never Work with Children or Animals: A minor case with the scene where Gennadiy pushes a kid into water. The kid, during the filming, was seen to visibly brace himself for the push. It ended up with Gaidai lying to the boy that Mironov won't push him anymore, while telling Mironov to push him harder this time. It worked.
• Ripped from the Headlines: It was actually inspired by a real case when someone tried to smuggle some valuables in an orthopedic cast.
• Throw It In!: Gaidai was known for giving a lot of creative freedom to his actors. For example most of Lyolik's dialogue was actually ad-libbed by Anatoli Papanov, his actor, and the crane's hook hitting Semyon while he was extracted from the speedboat in the epilogue was a real filming accident — Yuri Nikulin almost got a concussion. To his credit, Nikulin rolled with it and didn't break character. This is thanks to his circus training, where the golden rule is "Whatever happens, continue the act." (Once, during one of his performances at the circus, there was a fire on stage; he managed to put it out without anyone in the audience even knowing it wasn't a part of the act).
  • Also, there's a scene where Lyolik is calling Gennadiy an idiot. Papanov, who got frozen in water, was, in fact, yelling that to a cameraman, who failed to calculate the temperature of water, in which Lyolik was swimming. The camera happened to be running, and Gaidai decided to keep it.