In the early years of the 1970s comedy TV show Saturday Night Live, John Belushi portrayed an archetypal samurai — he has a strong sense of honor, speaks only (mock) Japanese, and wields a katana. Sketches featuring the character showed him in different occupations that would not be expected for a samurai. He always performed his tasks perfectly, despite scaring his clients quite a few times. The character was modeled after Toshiro Mifune's character in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Samurai Futaba would probably not have become a recurring character if not for Buck Henry's insistence that there be a second sketch featuring him when he first hosted on January 17, 1976. It is perhaps due to these origins that it became standard practice on SNL to feature a Samurai sketch every time Henry hosted, until Belushi left the cast. Except for "Samurai BMOC", each time Henry would play the same character, Mr. Dantley. In issue #74 of Marvel Team-Up (cover dated October, 1978), Belushi (in character as Samurai Futaba) teams up with Spider-Man to duel the Marvel Comics supervillain Silver Samurai. In the story, the Silver Samurai seeks to recover a ring containing a teleportation device that had inadvertently come into Belushi's possession. An alternate version of the "Samurai Deli" sketch also appears briefly in issue #54 of The Sandman, part of a timeline where Prez Rickard becomes President of the United States and hosts the "highest-rated" episode of Saturday Night Live in history.

List of Saturday Night Live episodes featuring Samurai Futaba