Just what is the origin of Chewbacca?
Inspiration can come from many sources and George Lucas seemed to have a vast pool to drink from.
“the Millennium Falcon was inspired by a hamburger, with the outrigger cockpit being an olive off to the side” or “My original inspiration for Chewbacca was my dog Indiana.”
“And later on after the recording I asked Terry ‘What’s the Wookie?’ and he said ‘Oh that’s a friend of mine who lives in Texas, Ralph Wookie, and I just threw his name in there as I always want to stick it to him and thought he’d get a kick out of hearing his name in a film’. Little did Terry know what kind of thing he was creating, this off-hand phrase has since become a character that literally billions of people probably know about.”
via-binarybonsai