13. The Soup Nazi was based on a real chef, who really did not appreciate the gag. Al Yeganeh, known as The Original SoupMan, operated in NYC with a famous set of strict rules that wold result in "no soup for you" if you didn't follow them. When the show imitated him in a 1995 episode, not only did Seinfeld find himself unceremoniously banned from his midtown Manhattan soup stall, but Yeganeh went on CNN and called him a "clown" whose use of "the N word—the Nazi word—is disgraceful." When the interviewer suggested Seinfeld made him famous, Yeganeh countered, "No. He got fame through me. I made him famous."

14. While the show never really viewed anything as off-limits, there was one episode that got shelved after making it all the way to the rehearsal stage with sets built and it focused on Elaine buying a gun. The season two episode was written by future Borat director Larry Charles, and while the premise seemed simple enough, a joke about Elaine shooting herself in the head referring to "The Kennedy," imitating the assassination of the president, left everyone involved wanting to pull the plug. As director Tom Cherones noted, "Guns aren't funny." "We did the read-through and then canceled it. A lot of other stuff happened, but trying to make that funny ended up being no fun," Seinfeld noted in his Reddit AMA. The episode was replaced with "The Phone Message."

15. The iconic theme music that opened each episode was tweaked slightly by composer Jonathan Wolff every week to better fit that episode. As he explained it, he would receive a detailed list of that week's opening lines and use them to influence the new jazzy riff. "It was a little bit more labor intensive than most other shows because I had to re-do that opening every time. But it was worth it," Wolff told Vice in 2015. "It was a worthwhile venture. It made sense. It wasn't a waste, even as I was doing them I knew it wasn't a waste. He was funny. He was creating new material. As long as he's creating new material, I'll do the same thing, and I will create along with him."