Star Wars Day: 10 quirky facts from a galaxy far, far away you do or do not know

Thanks to a play on words regarding "May the force be with you" becoming "May the fourth be with you," May 4 is widely considered as Star Wars Day, which is pretty much an excuse to bombard you with memes and GIFs and little-known facts about the iconic franchise.

Over 40 years later, there are still new things to learn about Jedis, Sith, droids and lightsabers.

Here’s a nod to that galaxy far, far away with 10 facts you might not know about the Star Wars films.

Luke Skywalker's lightsaber was made in New York

Turn's out that Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber (the one used by Luke in "Star Wars: A New Hope" and "Empire Strikes Back) was made not so long ago in a galaxy not so far away.

A few years ago, a sharp "Star Wars" fan named Pablo Hidalgo was watching "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back" at his place. He saw the word “NEW YORK” on the bottom of Luke's lightsaber and shared it on Twitter.

More digging showed that the film’s set creator, Roger Christian, made the prop (first for 1977’s “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope”) from old camera parts he found in a vintage photo shop in London, said the George Eastman Museum.

Those parts included a Graflex flashgun handle from Rochester.

The line: “I have a bad feeling about this” is said in every Star Wars movie

After being in all the first three movies, this saying became a fun signature line for the people making the movies. They put it in every Star Wars film. This saying is also one of the most known from the movies. It's not just in Star Wars, but also in other stories made by the same company and even in some not related to it at all.

In Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi, for the first time, the line "I have a bad feeling about this" is not said the usual way. But, the director Rian Johnson shared that the line is still there. In the scene at the Resistance base in D'Qar, it's BB-8 who says it, but he doesn't use regular words. General Leia agrees and says, "I'm with the droid on this one."

James Earl Jones says he recorded all his Darth Vader lines in a day

Jones finished the task for the first film in just 2 1/2 hours. He got $7,500 for it, which is like earning $3,000 every hour — pretty good, especially when you think Harrison Ford got just $10,000 for all his work in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. Jones later said, "I wanted to make Darth Vader more interesting, more subtle, more psychologically oriented. And he [George Lucas] said, ‘No. no. What we’re finding out is you’ve got to keep his voice on a very narrow ban of inflection because he ain’t human, really.’ So, that was the answer.”

Star Wars and the Wilhelm Scream

Ben Burtt, famous for his sound work, made the Wilhelm Scream well-known in the first Star Wars movie in 1977. According to an interview with Burtt, it was named after a character, Private Wilhelm, from an older movie. He used this scream in all the first Star Wars movies. The first time we hear it is when a one of the Storm Troopers falls and dies on the first Death Star. Here’s a video of the scream in Star Wars.

This scream didn’t just stick to Star Wars; it popped up in many movies from Toy Story to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers to Reservoir Dogs.

George Lucas makes a cameo appearance in Episode III, Revenge of the Sith

In the film series, according to ScreenRant, Star Wars creator George Lucas shows up just once. He plays a Senate member in "Revenge of the Sith," Episode III in the series. Lucas can be seen for just a few seconds, but it is easy to miss him if one doesn't know when and where to look. Lucas plays Baron Papanoida in the film, who is a blue-skinned Pantoran Senate member.

Lucas says this is his only short visit in all the movies.

Luke Skywalker was originally going to be the next Vader

In one of the early drafts of the Star Wars scripts, Luke Skywalker was originally going to turn over to the dark side to defeat his father, Darth Vader. This scene was scripted in a way that Luke would defeat Darth Vader after threatening Princess Leia to save her.

According to the book The Making of Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, George Lucas pitched it to co-writer Lawrence Kasdan, "Luke takes Vader's mask off. The mask is the very last thing—and then Luke puts it on and says, 'Now I am Vader.'

Lucas decided to go a different way, feeling like Luke going evil was too dark since the Star Wars franchise "is for kids."

Where did the original lightsaber sound come from?

The famous buzz sound of a lightsaber is taken from sampling a movie projector and mixing it with the feedback from an old television set. Sound producers working on the film would hold a stripped cable close to the old television set to attain the feedback noises produced by the electromagnetic disturbance.

This famous noise is used when moving the lightsaber or in battles. It's also there when you first pull out the lightsaber, and it makes a low hum when it's still.

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's communicator was made from a women's razor

This is one of the interesting facts from "The Phantom Menace" that is easy to miss. When Qui-Gon Jinn (played by Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (played by Ewan McGregor) talk on their communicators, take a closer look. They look like a Gillette razor. They didn't use a real razor, but made a copy out of resin from a Gillette Ladies Sensor Excel Razor.

How did they create Chewbacca's voice?

Ben Burtt, who made sounds for most of the series, mixed noises from bears, walruses, lions, and badgers, for Chewbacca's voice.

“It’s a voice that’s manufactured completely out of animal sounds — principally bears — and synchronized with the performance that is shot during filming,” Burtt recalled.

Weird things like potatoes and chewing gum made it into George Lucas' coolest space battles

In "The Empire Strikes Back" the heroes in the Millennium Falcon face an asteroid field to evade an Imperial Star Destroyer. To create the asteroid models in the background, potatoes were attached to a rig and filmed against a blue screen. Similarly, in "Return of the Jedi," visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston added unconventional items like his tennis shoe, yogurt containers, and wads of gum to represent fleets of ships in the background during the Rebel ships' attack on the Death Star.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: May the 4th be with you: 10 Star Wars facts you didn't know