Melancholy was a large presence in AB characters in most Prakash Mehra films -- be it the revenge-seeking cop of Zanjeer, the lovelorn orphan of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar or the neglected son of a rich tycoon who hits the bottle in Sharaabi.

But Mehra also convinced Bachchan into performing a drag queen number in Mere Angne Mein in Laawaris. There was also the hilarious English is a bherry phunny language sequence in Namak Halal.

Things soured between the director and actor after the former discovered that Amitabh was working on two films with similar themes (magic), namely Mehra's Jaadugar and Manmohan Desai's Toofan.