50 Fun Facts About The Karate Kid

Which actor plays Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid?

Ralph Macchio got the part because the casting director remembered him from The Outsiders, and he was already 21 when he auditioned to play a high-school senior.

Who directed The Karate Kid in 1984?

John G. Avildsen, a former film editor, videotaped the cast rehearsing the script before the shoot, and that complete run-through can still be watched online.

From which state do Daniel and his mother move to California in The Karate Kid?

New Jersey: they leave Newark for Reseda because his mother has taken a new job with a California computer firm.

What is Mr Miyagi's job in the apartment complex where Daniel lives?

Handyman Miyagi comes to fix the LaRussos' faucet, finds Daniel trying to learn karate from a book, and sees through his story about falling off a bicycle.

What is Mr Miyagi trying to catch with chopsticks when Daniel first comes to his workshop?

A fly: Miyagi tells Daniel that a man who can catch one with chopsticks can accomplish anything, then admits he has not managed it yet.

What did Pat Morita earn for playing Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid?

An Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, came for a part the producer at first refused to give him, seeing only a nightclub comedian, until a taped audition changed his mind.

What is the point of the endless chores Mr Miyagi sets Daniel in The Karate Kid?

They teach him to block: when Daniel finally loses patience, Miyagi throws punches and kicks at him, and the sanding and painting motions parry every one.

Which stance does Daniel adopt for the final blow of the tournament in The Karate Kid?

The Crane was invented for the film, and when Miyagi practises it on a beach post it is really Darryl Vidal, who plays a beaten semi-finalist, in a body suit and a bald wig.

Which tournament does Daniel win at the climax of The Karate Kid?

The All-Valley Karate Championships are Miyagi's idea: he gets Kreese to call off the bullying on the promise that Daniel will face his students there, under rules.

Who hands Daniel the trophy at the end of The Karate Kid?

Johnny, his defeated rival, hands it over, but the script ran on to a showdown outside the arena in which Miyagi tweaks Kreese's nose, and that scene was saved to open Part II.

What was John Kreese's background before he ran the Cobra Kai dojo?

Special Forces veteran Kreese, an Army captain in Vietnam, runs his dojo like a boot camp, and at the tournament he orders a pupil to get himself disqualified by putting Daniel 'out of commission'.

What form did NBC's 1989 Karate Kid spin-off take?

A cartoon for Saturday mornings sent Daniel and Miyagi around the world after a stolen magic shrine, with no tournament in sight, and it lasted just 13 episodes.

Before The Karate Kid, Pat Morita was best known for which television role?

Arnold on Happy Days first appeared in 1975, and a year later Morita had his own sitcom, Mr. T and Tina, which ABC cancelled after five episodes; he was back at the drive-in by 1982.

Which famous order does Kreese give his fighter during the final of The Karate Kid?

Sweep the leg: Daniel's knee had already been wrecked by an illegal kick Kreese ordered in the semi-final, and even his star pupil stares back in shock before obeying.

Where is The Karate Kid Part II mostly set?

Okinawa is the setting, but the film was shot on Oahu, Hawaii, where the crew built a replica village and hired Okinawa-born islanders as extras.

Which object teaches the Miyagi family's secret technique in The Karate Kid Part II?

A handheld twisting drum, the den-den daiko, shows the counter-strike, and in the final fight the whole crowd spins theirs to remind a beaten Daniel how to win.

Who takes Kumiko hostage and demands a fight to the death in The Karate Kid Part II?

Chozen ziplines into the festival to do it, and when Daniel has him beaten and is told to finish it, he honks his nose instead, as Miyagi once did to Kreese.

Which Peter Cetera song was the theme to The Karate Kid Part II?

Glory of Love was Cetera's first single after quitting Chicago, yet he wrote it with David Foster, the producer behind that band's recent hits, and it went to number one in the US.

Which future Oscar winner starred in The Next Karate Kid in 1994?

Hilary Swank had moved to Los Angeles with her mother as a teenager to chase acting; this was her first lead, and five years later she made Boys Don't Cry, the first of her two Best Actress wins.

Where does Mr Miyagi take Julie to train in The Next Karate Kid?

A Buddhist monastery is where Miyagi takes Julie during her two-week school suspension, and the monks later visit Boston, where they go bowling with him.

Which martial art does the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid actually teach, despite its title?

Kung fu is what Mr Han teaches in China, and the winning move is one the boy copies from a woman he watches mirroring a cobra at a mountain temple.

Which city does the twelve-year-old hero move to in the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid?

Beijing becomes home when his widowed mother's job at a car factory is transferred there from Detroit.

What does Mr Han make his pupil do repeatedly in the 2010 Karate Kid remake?

Take his jacket on and off, drop it, pick it up, hang it up: the routine quietly builds the muscle memory he will later fight with.

Who plays the mentor, Mr Han, in the 2010 Karate Kid remake?

Jackie Chan plays Mr Han as a grieving man who rebuilds the car his wife and son died in, then smashes it again every year on the anniversary of the crash.

Which pop star recorded the theme song for the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid?

Justin Bieber cut 'Never Say Never' with the film's young star rapping a verse; it began as a sultry demo called 'Sexy Together' and was rewritten with inspirational lyrics for the film.

On which service did Cobra Kai first launch in 2018?

YouTube Red, soon renamed YouTube Premium, launched the show, but after two seasons YouTube chose to sell it, so the finished third season premiered on a rival service.

Which actor plays Johnny Lawrence in both The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai?

William Zabka was a wrestler with no karate training when he was cast as the bully in 1984; the film sent him off to study Tang Soo Do for real.

How was Cobra Kai's sixth and final season released?

In three parts of five episodes each, from July 2024 to February 2025; the middle part takes the rival dojos to a world tournament in Barcelona.

Which two actors returned as Kreese and Terry Silver in Cobra Kai?

Martin Kove and Thomas Ian Griffith both came back: Griffith had given up acting to write for television, including the series Grimm, and came out of retirement to play Silver again.

Which award did Cobra Kai's third season receive a nomination for?

Outstanding Comedy Series at the Emmys was a step up for a karate saga whose earlier Emmy nominations had all been for stunt coordination, though it lost to Ted Lasso.

Two of Cobra Kai's three creators first made their names writing which comedy film series?

Harold & Kumar came from Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who based its heroes on their school friends; they built Cobra Kai with Josh Heald, a writer of Hot Tub Time Machine.

Which bullied teenage neighbour becomes the first student of the reopened Cobra Kai dojo?

Miguel Diaz lives next door to the beaten 1984 finalist, by now a drinker in a Reseda flat, who fights off the boy's bullies and reopens the dojo to train him.

Which actress played Ali Mills, Daniel's girlfriend, in The Karate Kid?

Elisabeth Shue had left Wellesley to act, and this was her first film; the sequel writes Ali out in a line, saying she left Daniel for a college football player.

What does Mr Miyagi give Daniel for his eighteenth birthday, along with a karate uniform?

A classic car: the yellow Ford convertible is one of the fleet Miyagi had made him wash and polish, so the chore turns into the reward.

What does Daniel LaRusso own when Cobra Kai begins?

Auto dealerships: LaRusso Auto Group trades on his old fame, with adverts that show him karate-chopping prices under the slogan 'We kick the competition'.

How does Cobra Kai relate to the original Karate Kid films?

A direct sequel to the first three films, it flips the viewpoint, following the beaten bully of 1984 as he reopens the dojo that trained him.

Which streaming service has shown every new Cobra Kai season since the third?

Netflix took over the show with its third season already made, then ordered three more, carrying the story to its end in 2025.

Who wrote The Karate Kid's screenplay, drawing on his own martial arts training?

Robert Mark Kamen took up martial arts at 17 after a gang beat him up at the 1964 World's Fair, then found a teacher who spoke almost no English; he poured both into the script.

What was the name of Jaden Smith's character in the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid?

Dre Parker was a part shaped for its actor: his parents, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, produced the remake, which the trade press called a star vehicle refashioned for him.

How did The Next Karate Kid fare with critics and at the box office in 1994?

Panned, and a box-office flop: it took about $9 million in US cinemas, the lowest of the series, and no Karate Kid film followed until the 2010 remake.

The 2022 memoir by the actor who played Daniel LaRusso is titled what?

Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me carries in its subtitle the film title its author once fought to change, sure he would be stuck with it for life.

Which Bananarama hit made its US debut in The Karate Kid but was left off the soundtrack album?

Cruel Summer had been a British hit a year earlier; the film carried it to number nine in America, the trio's first top ten there, even though they kept it off the album.

Which company, owner of a 1966 character called Karate Kid, let the 1984 film use the title?

DC Comics had a Karate Kid of its own, a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes; it let the film and its sequels borrow the name and is thanked in the credits.

Who composed the musical score for The Karate Kid?

Bill Conti built the score around the pan flute of Romanian virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir, dropped the instrument for Part II, and brought it back for the third film.

Joe Esposito's tournament-montage song 'You're the Best' was originally written for which film?

Rocky III passed on it when Sylvester Stallone chose 'Eye of the Tiger' instead, which is why a song for an underdog's first tournament insists that history repeats itself.

The actress who played Ali in The Karate Kid was already familiar from adverts for which chain?

Burger King adverts came first; she later quit Harvard a few credits short of her degree to act, and went back in 2000 to finish it.

Which Japanese film star did the makers of The Karate Kid first want as Mr Miyagi?

Toshiro Mifune, the star of Seven Samurai, was the producer's grand-slam idea: hire the most famous Japanese actor alive. It fell through, and the part went to a stand-up comedian.

In The Karate Kid, Mr Miyagi served in Europe in World War II with which US Army unit?

442nd Infantry Regiment soldiers were almost all Japanese Americans, many with families held in camps at home while they fought in Europe, the irony Miyagi's story turns on.

In The Karate Kid, Miyagi's wife and son died in childbirth at which wartime internment camp?

Manzanar gave Pat Morita a scene he knew from life: as a boy he was held with his family in two other camps, Gila River and Tule Lake.

What does Daniel go as to the Halloween dance in The Karate Kid?

A shower: Miyagi builds him the curtained costume, and at the dance Daniel soaks his chief tormentor with a hose, earning the beating that Miyagi steps in to stop.