Shanghai Noon - Cultural References

Cultural References

The title (a pun on the Gary Cooper classic High Noon) and several names used in the film pay homage to earlier westerns. Chan's character, "Chon Wang" is meant to sound like John Wayne, and the antagonist, Nathan Van Cleef, is an homage to Lee Van Cleef, who played in the 1976 kung-fu western film The Stranger and the Gunfighter, among other roles in major westerns. In addition, Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson's character) reveals at the end that his real name is Wyatt Earp, which Chon laughingly dismisses as "a terrible name for a cowboy".

• The Chinese characters shown in the background during the opening credits are excerpts from a translation of "The Frog Prince."
• Chon Wang is the Chinese translation/pronunciation of John Wayne.
• The song playing during the first bar-fight sequence is "La Grange" by ZZ Top, the same song that plays during The Dirty Dozen (1967)-style, and in intro of the characters in Armageddon (1998), an earlier film which starred Owen Wilson.
• The song played when Roy is teaching Chon to be a cowboy is Kid Rock's "Cowboy".
• The line "I don't know karate, but I know crazy" is from the James Brown song "Payback", from the 1973 album of the same name.
• During the scene where Roy and Chon are drunk in the hotel, director Tom Dey hoped to include a drunken kung fu scene as an homage to The Legend of Drunken Master (1994). There was no time to choreograph such a scene, so Dey showed Chon blowing bubbles from his mouth, as Wong Fei-hung does in the Drunken Master movie.
• The scene at the end, outside the church and heavily surrounded, is an homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
• The travelling show (seen at the end behind Roy O'Bannon's former gang) has a reference to the western TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and also a reference to Sapper's Bulldog Drummond character.