The ‘Seinfeld’ Writers Almost Turned the Soup Nazi Into a Real Nazi
· Vice
The Season 7 Seinfeld episode “The Soup Nazi” is easily one of the most iconic in the show’s history. Inspired by real-life New York City soup vendor Ali Yeganeh, the titular character’s portrayal struck such a nerve with the guy he was based on that it earned both Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander lifetime bans from Yeganeh’s Soup Kitchen International. A reconciliation seems unlikely at this point, and it’s not hard to understand why. As Alexander found out after the episode aired, Yeganeh’s family had actually escaped from Nazi territory while World War II was still going on.
It’s a good thing for him, then, that the writers didn’t take the whole Nazi angle as far as they originally intended. As you may recall, at the end of the episode, Yev Kassem (Larry Thomas), better known as the Soup Nazi, closes down his restaurant after Elaine threatens to publicize his recipes. Newman delivers the upsetting news to Jerry, telling him that Kassem is giving away the last of his soup and moving to Argentina. This prompts Jerry to make a run for the store, thus bringing a close to the Soup Nazi’s storyline.
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‘Probably Just as Well’ the Seinfeld Writers Abandoned the Nazi Storyline
But that’s not where the character’s journey was supposed to end. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2017, Seinfeld writer David Mandel revealed that there was a lot of discussion about giving the Soup Nazi his own end sequence.
According to Mandel, the scene in question would’ve taken place in the jungles of Brazil and parodied the 1978 sci-fi thriller The Boys from Brazil. In it, the Soup Nazi was to be shown returning to the other Nazis—meaning legitimate Nazi war criminals—with the recipes Elaine had gotten her hands on.
“It was sort of half-serious, half ‘Should we do this?, half ‘We’re never going to do it.’ But it was much discussed,” Mandel explained. “Going down a river and seeing lots of young boys with blue eyes from experimentation with the soups—it was a full coming together of soup and Nazi,” he continued. Mandel went on to say that it was “probably just as well” that they didn’t end up filming the proposed sequence, all things considered.
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