Trivia

The original title, during production in 1986, was "Rise of the Phoenix."

Shiro Tomita, who plays the gangster boss Nagura, in real life was a Sergeant in the L.A.P.D.

Akashi (John Nishio)'s monologue about imagining one's final hour and the various ways of dying while meditating is taken from the unwritten Samurai code of conduct, known as Bushido, which states that absolute loyalty to death must be worked at every day. One should begin each day in quiet meditation, imagining one's final hour and various ways of dying - by bow and arrow, gun, spear, cut down by the sword, swallowed up by the sea, jumping into a fire, being struck by lightning, crushed in an earthquake, falling off a cliff, death from illness, sudden death - and thus one should begin the day by dying.