Young Frankenstein - Cultural References

Cultural References

• In one of the scenes of a village assembly, one of the authority figures says that they already know what Frankenstein is up to based on five previous experiences. On the DVD commentary track, Mel Brooks says this is a reference to the first five Universal films. In the Gene Wilder DVD interview, he says the film is based on Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942).
• The brain which Igor is ordered to steal is labeled as belonging to "Hans Delbrück, scientist and saint". A real-life Hans Delbrück was a nineteenth-century military historian; his son Max Delbrück was a twentieth-century biochemist and Nobel laureate.
• Every time Frau Blücher's name is mentioned, horses are heard whinnying as if afraid of her name. Many viewers mistakenly believe that Blücher means "glue" in German; however, Blücher is a well-known German surname. The German term for glue is der Kleber, or tierischer Leim for animal glue. Brooks suggested in a 2000 interview that he had based the joke on the erroneous translation, which he had heard from someone else. In an interview, Cloris Leachman said that Mel had told her that that is why he named her character Blücher. In the audio commentary, Mel Brooks explains that the horses are whinnying to show us that Frau Blücher is an ominous character: "They're terrified of her; God only knows what she does to them when nobody else is around."
• The U.S. AMC cable network broadcast a 2007 "DVD TV" version of the film with commentary in subtitles. Among other information, it stated that Inga was based on Ulla from Brooks' earlier film The Producers.