At nearly six minutes long, the brutal alleyway fight scene between Nada and fellow homeless laborer Frank Armitage (Keith David) over the latter's refusal to put on the special sunglasses is one of the most celebrated in film history. It's been endlessly referenced, quoted and parodied (most notably via a nearly shot-for-shot re-creation in the South Park episode "Cripple Fight"), and it's inevitably brought up as a point of comparison every time a potential new "best fight scene of all time" emerges. The scene was conceived by Carpenter, Piper, and veteran stunt performer and coordinator Jeff Imada, who has worked on a laundry list of classic action films from Lethal Weapon to Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, with the idea of creating a fight scene that would be totally singular.
"I wanted to do this unique fight," the director said in a documentary, "and I brought Jeff Imada in, and brought Roddy in, and we all sat around and talked about ... what would make a fight unique, in the sense that you haven't seen anything like this. And I wanted to utilize some of Roddy's professional wrestling techniques and knowledge." David related how this knowledge helped to make the fight more realistic: "He teaches me about this stuff, reactions, when you get punched and when you get hurt." Piper's assessment of his costar's contribution to the scene was characteristically straightforward. "This guy," he told an interviewer, "hits like a mule."
