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The ‘Seinfeld’ Writers Almost Turned the Soup Nazi Into a Real Nazi

The iconic Yev Kassem’s journey was supposed to come to a much darker conclusion.

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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........

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