Who doesn't love Tombstone? It's one of the most beloved Westerns of the modern era. And if you're a fan, you can undoubtedly quote most, if not all, of the lines delivered with scene-stealing flair by Val Kilmer in what's become the definitive portrayal of gambling gunslinger Doc Holliday. You may know every scene in this movie like the back of your hand, but today we've collected fifteen different things you may not know about Tombstone. You may walk away pleasantly surprised and shocked.

Tombstone boasts one of the most formidable macho ensembles imaginable: Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, as well as smaller roles for Michael Rooker, Thomas Haden Church, Stephen Lang, Billy Zane, Jason Priestly, Billy Bob Thornton, and Terry O'Quinn. So let's get into it, shall we?

Updated May 2023: If you are a fan of Tombstone and other Westerns, you'll be pleased to know this article has been updated with additional content and entries by Danilo Raúl.

15 Val Kilmer Stole the Show

Kilmer in Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Doc Holliday wasn't a member of the Earp family clan, yet the character steals the show from the three main leads. His portrayal sums up Wyatt Earp's real-life recollections of Holliday's character: a long-lean, ash blond man consumed by illness and the most fantastic gambler and fastest shot he'd ever met. Kilmer did his homework on the character, practicing his signature quick draw until he had the right pace. Kilmer struggled with the wardrobe as wearing wool in the Arizona summer made it unbearable to film.

14 The Real Wyatt Earp Was a Hollywood Consultant

Tombstone-val Kilmer
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Earp moved to Hollywood in 1915 and made a living as a consultant for multiple early Western films. He was friends with John Ford and Henry Carey, pioneers of the Western genre before it exploded. John Wayne claimed to have met with Earp once, leading him to model his signature way of walking to resemble the famous cowboy.

13 Tombstone Was Meant to Be Over Three Hours Long

tombstone ride
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

After being released on DVD, a lot of scenes were expanded. However, many elements remained on the cutting floor. There's one sequence about the cowboys' bonfire and mourning. These events take place exactly after the burial in the O.K. Corral. The scene can be seen in the movie's trailer, but it never made it to the finished print. An extended version of the courtship between Wyatt and Josephine was cut to prevent the film from losing its pacing.

Related: Tombstone vs. Wyatt Earp: Which Was the Better '90s Western?

12 Another Wyatt Earp Film Was Released Shortly After Tombstone

Costner in Wyatt Earp
Warner Bros. 

Although this film premiered in December 1993, another Wyatt Earp movie produced by Warner Bros. was on the way. The new venture had Kevin Costner in the lead, and it was written, produced, and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Critics and moviegoers would favor Tombstone for being fast-paced and historically accurate, while the Ladan film was panned for being long and tedious.

11 Tombstone Features an All-Star Cast

tombstone bar scene
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Pay close attention, and you'll notice the presence of Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Charlton Heston, Stephen Lang, and Billy Zane. All these actors can be seen playing prominent roles in popular James Cameron films like The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, Avatar, and Titanic.

10 Tombstone Is Missing a Few Earps

Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

The heroic ensemble at the center of Tombstone includes Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, and his brothers: Virgil, played with typical awesome gruffness by Sam Elliott, and Morgan, played by the late Bill Paxton, in all of his boyish but badass glory.

But there were actually nine siblings in total: sisters Martha, Virginia, and Adelia; half-brother Newton; eldest brother James, and youngest brother, Warren. James, a professional gambler, saloon keeper, and Union veteran like Wyatt and Virgil, was actually in Tombstone during the shootout at the O.K. Corral, but he was believed to be sitting at home eating lunch. Warren wasn't in town for the gunfight but was deputized by Wyatt, joining him, Doc Holliday, "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson, and Sherman McMaster on the Earp Vendetta Ride after Morgan's murder.

9 Kurt Russell Was Tombstone's Real Director

tombstone kurt russell
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

The late Kevin Jarre had written the Oscar-winning Civil War drama Glory and was set to make his directorial debut with Tombstone, from his own script. But his inexperience and religious adherence to what was probably an overly long shooting script caused him to fall behind early on, after wrapping only the film's Charlton Heston scenes. On the advice of Sylvester Stallone, who apparently worked on Rambo: First Blood Part II the same way, Kurt Russell hired director George Cosmatos to be his on-set "yes man" while more or less secretly directing Tombstone himself.

He sacrificed hours of sleep and several pages of his own character's dialogue to make it all work, promising Cosmatos he wouldn't reveal their secret so long as the director was alive, though he did speak with Entertainment Weekly about the situation a bit in 1993. It wasn't until 2013, almost ten years after Cosmatos passed away, that Russell finally revealed all in a candid, in-depth, and fascinating interview with the esteemed and historically focused True West Magazine. Val Kilmer more or less backed up his co-star's version of events in a 2017 post, writing, in part, "I'll be clear. Kurt is solely responsible for Tombstone's success, no question."

8 Wyatt Earp Really Waded Into a Creek to Shoot Curly Bill

The Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday in Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

It's one of the movie's most cinematic moments: a super-powered and supernatural feeling showdown where Wyatt Earp charges directly into Curly Bill's line of fire. Somehow, all the shots fired by Bill miss the famous lawman, just before he empties his double-barreled shotgun into the dumbfounded leader of the Cowboys. One of the Cowboys, Johnny Barnes, survived the gunfight in real life, dying from his injuries a short while later in a nearby farmhouse. Before he passed, he related the story of Wyatt Earp's near miraculous feat, portrayed in the film exactly as he described.

7 Willem Dafoe Almost Played Doc Holliday

Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ
Universal Pictures 

It's crazy to imagine anyone other than Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, but Willem Dafoe was reportedly the first choice for the role. It's even crazier to imagine that the lead role in a Martin Scorsese film would sour a studio on an actor, but apparently, the decision-makers balked at hiring Dafoe because of the controversy surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ some five years earlier. If the same reports are to be believed, Mickey Rourke turned down the role of Johnny Ringo. Rourke did later star in Danny Trejo's direct-to-DVD horror Western, Dead in Tombstone as Lucifer.

6 Doc Holliday Actually Did Say "You're a daisy if you do!"

kurt-russell-and-val-kilmer-in-tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

In fact, all of the lines spoken by the actors during the pivotal scene at the O.K. Corral are said to be historically accurate, based on different historical sources, like newspaper reports from Tombstone that chronicled the famous shootout. But did Doc ever say, "I'm your Huckleberry?" For that matter, did Val Kilmer even say it? This is a hotly debated topic online. According to True West, the phrase "I'm your Huckleberry" is attributed to Doc in the 1928 book Tombstone by Walter Noble Burns, which was based in part on interviews with old-timers from the area. True West and other sources also contend.

"I'm your Huckleberry" is an old Southern phrase meaning, basically, "If you want a fight, I'm your man," or even more patronizingly, "If you want to dance, I'll dance with you." Doc Holliday was born in Georgia and Kilmer certainly gave him a Southern aristocrat's charms. Then there are those who say the line is actually "I'm your huckle bearer," arguing that a "huckle" was a word for the handles on a casket, making a "huckle bearer" a pallbearer. That would make the line, "I'm your huckle bearer" pretty sinister. But we've gone to the source material. We took a look at the screenplay, a fourth draft dated March 15, 1993, to be exact, and it most certainly says "Huckleberry."

5 Doc Holliday's Fingerwalking Trick Is a Val Kilmer Staple

Doc Holliday Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

The way Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday rolls a coin across his knuckles isn't just super cool; it's something of a signature move for the actor, going all the way back to the '80s. Eagle-eyed viewers will be rewarded with the discovery of similar finger-walking maneuvers throughout Kilmer's pre-Tombstone filmography. In Real Genius, it's a pair of quarters, in Top Gun it's a pen.

4 Doc Holliday and Batman Have a Cool Connection

batman-forever-1995-val-kilmer
Warner Bros.

Val Kilmer was born on December 31, 1959. That same year, the late Adam West played gunslinger Doc Holliday in not one, not two, but three different episodes of three different TV Westerns: Colt .45, Sugarfoot, and Lawman. Beginning in 1966, West starred in the role that would come to define him, as Gotham City's Caped Crusader.

Thirty years later, Val Kilmer put on the cape and cowl for Batman Forever. How did Kilmer come to accept the mantle of the Bat, after Batman and Batman Returns star Michael Keaton abdicated from the role? Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher was impressed by Kilmer's performance in Tombstone as Doc Holliday.

3 Doc Holliday and Frédéric Chopin Have a Sad Connection

Doc Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Doc Holliday says so many cool things in Tombstone that even his more subtle witticisms made their way onto t-shirts, patches, and memes. The profanity-laced line about Frédéric Chopin, which Doc says to Billy Clanton (Thomas Haden Church), is loaded with a richer if profoundly sad, deeper meaning.

Related: Best Western Movies of the 1960s, Ranked

Both Doc and the composer whose music Doc plays are believed to have died from the same cause: tuberculosis. This famous quote from Chopin is definitely something it's easy to imagine being uttered by Kilmer in Tombstone: "I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them." Frédéric Chopin died in 1849, two years before Doc Holliday was born.

2 Tombstone Has Plenty of Hollywood Western Easter Eggs

Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

The filmmakers behind Tombstone paid attention to historical accuracy and even put Wyatt Earp's real-life fifth cousin in the movie, in the role of Billy Claiborne. The nods to Hollywood Westerns were sewn into the Tombstone fabric with equal reverence.

For starters, there's the film's narrator: screen legend Robert Mitchum. The Tombstone cast also includes veteran Western actors Harry Carey, Jr., Buck Taylor from TV's Gunsmoke, and Charlton Heston. Paula Malcomson and the late Powers Boothe would both go on to star in HBO's critically acclaimed Western series, Deadwood.

1 The Real Tombstone That Was in the Movie

Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

There's a headstone visible in an early scene with an epitaph so cool, it seems ripped straight from a plastic grave marker found in Halloween novelty shops. "Here lies Lester Moore, Four Slugs from a .44, No Les No more." But this isn't just movie magic. It's a real artifact from the Old West.

There's actually a headstone in a Tombstone, Arizona cemetery that says that. However, that's not the one we actually see in the film. Producers actually filmed some of the movie on location at Knotts Berry Farm theme park in Southern California, where a replica of the headstone in question sits in the park's Wild West area among other attractions.

Somewhere, there's a bunch of footage in Kurt Russell's possession just waiting for an ultimate director's cut edition of Tombstone. But until then we will just keep quoting the version of Tombstone that we already have and we already so dearly love.