20. Yoda was Almost a Monkey
When I say, “Monkey,” I don’t mean they almost made the Yoda puppet look like a monkey. George Lucas considered putting a live monkey in a mask to become Yoda. Not everyone thought this was such a good idea. Reportedly, one of the crew said, “… The monkey’s just going to pull the mask off over and over again. It’s never going to work.” Instead, Lucas hired Frank Oz to bring a Yoda puppet to life. Good idea, that was.
19. Yoda and Albert Einstein Share a Lip
In an effort to evoke a more evolved being, creators of the Yoda puppet made him resemble Albert Einstein. Yoda’s upper lip wrinkles mirror the whiskers of Einstein’s mustache. The Yoda puppet worked so well when subsequent films attempted to recreate Yoda via computer generated graphics, fans lost their ever-loving Midi-chlorians. This departure from the original idea to cast a monkey was so far the other side of the spectrum, it’s hard to imagine Yoda any other way. He was so much more Einstein than monkey.