This movie was first announced as a remake of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, and was originally titled "Blazing Samurai". The writers of the original film recieved "screenplay by" credits, as the film lifts the plot and various jokes from Blazing Saddles and puts a more family-friendly spin on them.
Unlike most other animated films where the voice actors record their lines individually, Michael Cera and Samuel L. Jackson were originally set to record most of their dialogue together to have their interactions sound more natural. They managed to get in a single session before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, causing them to record the remainder of their lines from home. Dialogue for the film was initially recorded between 2015 and 2016, when the film was originally set to be released in 2017, but when the script got reworked when production restarted in 2019, most of the dialogue had be redone.
The line used by the Shogun that "it's good to be the Shogun" was a nod to King Louis XVI's line "it's good to be the king" in Mel Brooks' films History Of The World Part I, Men in Tights and other Mel Brooks films, and Louis the XVI and Rabbi Tucker were also portrayed by Brooks.
Samuel L. Jackson's infamous swear word is replaced by "mother father cocker spaniel"
This film is a samurai remake of the western comedy Der wilde wilde Westen (1974). Historically, many samurai films were remade as westerns. These included Yojimbo - Der Leibwächter (1961), starring Toshirô Mifune, which was remade as Für eine Handvoll Dollar (1964). The Shogun's name, Toshiro Tifune, is a reference to Mifune, and Hank's cry of "Yo! Jimbo!" is a reference to the film.