Actor 'Amjad Khan' was almost dropped from the project because scriptwriter 'Javed Akhtar' found his voice too weak for Gabbar Singh's role.
The scene of killing of Thakur's family by Gabbar is an adaptation of the killing of McBain family by Frank in Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West .
Sholay, despite being a huge hit, received only one Filmfare award (best editing: MS Shinde...The awards for the best film, the best dialogues, the best direction and others went to Deewar.
This was the first film in the history of Indian cinema to celebrate a silver-jubilee (25-week) initial release at over 100 theaters across India.
This film was directly inspired by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, by Akira Kurosawa's Les 7 Samouraïs (1954), Bandidos (1967) among others. Some critics at the time even began calling it a curry western.