George Lucas originally envisioned Star Wars as a Flash Gordon remake. When he couldn't secure the rights, he decided to write his own space opera, drawing heavy inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's samurai films and Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."

The iconic lightsaber sound was created by sound designer Ben Burtt. He combined the hum of an old television picture tube with the buzz of a film projector motor, swinging a microphone past a speaker to create the famous Doppler effect pitch shifts.

Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher often messed around on set. During the trash compactor scene, Mark Hamill held his breath so long that he popped a blood vessel in his face, forcing the crew to shoot him from only one side for the rest of the sequence.

The Millennium Falcon's design was famously inspired by a hamburger with an olive stuck next to it. The original design for the Falcon was deemed too similar to the spacecraft in Space: 1999, so it was repurposed as the Rebel Blockade Runner seen at the start of A New Hope.

Yoda's unique speech pattern (Object-Subject-Verb) was created to make him sound ancient and wise. Frank Oz, who voiced and puppeteered Yoda, insisted on keeping the puppet's movements slow and deliberate to emphasize his age and connection to the Force.

The snowy planet of Hoth was filmed in Finse, Norway, during a real blizzard. Harrison Ford arrived on set via a snowplow train because the weather was too severe for helicopters, and some scenes were shot by the crew simply opening the back door of their hotel and filming out into the storm.

Quiz 2: The Ultimate Star Wars Trivia Test

Think you know the galaxy inside and out? Test your knowledge with these 15 deep-cut trivia questions.