Four scenes were cut from the original English-language release and were never dubbed into English from Italian. When American Movie Classics showed the "Extended English Version", the scenes were restored. Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach dubbed their voices for the movie, but another actor had to be found to dub Angel Eyes' lines, as Lee Van Cleef had died in 1989.
In the gun store, everything Eli Wallach does with the guns is completely unscripted. Eli knew little about the guns, so he was instructed to do whatever he wanted.
In the scene where Blondie brings a tied-up Tuco into town to claim the bounty on him, Tuco spits out a cigar and yells out something in Spanish. Translated to English, he is yelling out "Son of a bitch that gave birth to you!"
In the scene where the bridge is blown up, and Tuco and Blondie are hunkered down behind sandbags waiting for the explosion, Clint Eastwood's career came within 2 feet of ending prematurely. A fist-sized piece of rock shrapnel from the explosion slams into the sandbag right next to Eastwood's head (watch it in slow motion to see the rock flying in).
In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes is "The Ugly" and Tuco "The Bad," which is the reverse of their designations in the actual film. This is because the Italian title translated into English is actually The Good, the Ugly, the Bad, not The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and the Italian trailer had "The Ugly" and "The Bad" in that order. When the trailer was transferred to English, The Ugly and The Bad were not reversed to coincide with the altered title, causing the incorrect designations.
Italian censorship visa # 48356 delivered on 23-12-1966.
Sad Hill Cemetery was a very-convincing set piece constructed by the pyrotechnic crew and not a real cemetery. Today the site is marked as a local point of interest. Though the central stone 'proscenium' and parapet are gone, the circles of grave-mounds are still quite prominent.
Shot in the deserts of Spain with 1,500 Spanish soldiers as extras.
The bridge that Tuco and Blondie blow was an actual bridge built by Spanish army engineers. The Spanish agreed to blow the bridge only if their captain could be the one to do it. When it came to blowing the bridge the captain didn't notify Sergio Leone and just blew the bridge up without any cameras rolling. The army was so sorry with what they did that they rebuilt the bridge only to blow it up again.
The film was budgeted at an expensive (for the time) $1.6 million.
The film was shot with a process called Techniscope. This process means that you can shoot without an anamorphic lens, and only use half as much film as you would normally use. The Techniscope process places two widescreen frames on a single 35 mm frame.
The following guns are used in this movie. 1.Blondie uses: A Colt 1851 cartridge conversion revolver (with silver snake grips), and a Winchester 1866 "yellow boy" with ladder elevated sights. 2. Tuco uses: A Colt 1851 Navy cartridge conversion revolver with a lanyard. 3. Angel Eyes uses: A Remington 1858 Army percussion revolver. 4. Soldiers used: Gatling guns with drum magazines, and Howitzer cannons.
The grips on Clint Eastwood's pistol have an inlaid silver rattlesnake. His pistol in Per qualche dollaro in più had the same grips. In the TV series Rawhide, Rowdy Yates (Eastwood) kills a gunfighter carrying a pistol with the same grips and takes it for his own. Eastwood's character would carry the pistol with the rattlesnake grips for the remainder of the series' run.
The guns in the film were supplied by Aldo Uberti Inc., a company in Italy.
The price of gold in 1862 was US$20.672 an ounce. As of 5 March 2010 it is US$1134.45 an ounce. So the $200,000 Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie are after would be worth $10,975,715.94 on 5 March 2010.
The prison camp "Betterville" was inspired by the actual Confederate prison camp of Andersonville, where thousands of Union prisoners died, and based on steel engravings of Andersonville from August 1864.
The three man gunfight scene is called either a "Mexican standoff" or a truel (game theory). There are several mathematical papers covering the many complex outcomes of a truel. Other movies that use a truel are Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
The three principal actors are the only ones who speak actual English in the film: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, with the exceptions of Al Mulock (the one-armed man) and John Bartha (the sheriff). Everyone else in the film is really speaking their native language, mostly Italian and Spanish, and was later dubbed into English.
The train features an armed car with a mortar type cannon. These were actually mounted on trains during the Civil War, especially where railroads had to operate near places where there was heavy fighting.
The trim on Confederate soldiers' uniforms identified the type of unit they were assigned to. Blue indicated infantry, gold cavalry and red artillery. Most of the soldiers in the prison camp wore historically accurate uniforms.