The character Priest White Lotus was loosely based on the continuing Taoist character, Pai Mei. In real life, the Taoist Priest Bak Mei (translated to mean "White Eyebrows") is said to have been a large influence for the demise of Shaolin during the Qing Dynasty.
Chia-Hui Liu plays Hong Wen-Ting, the hero who had defeated Pai Mei only to go toe-to-toe with his twin, who has mastered the fatal "hundred pace palm" technique. Many years later in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Liu played the part of the evil Pai Mei, the same white-haired character with a fatal "five-point palm-exploding heart technique."
In Executioners from Shaolin (1977) the white-haired leader Pai Mei was killed, so when the studio was going to make a sequel, it decided to create the character of a twin brother, a classmate of the slain Pai Mei, who enacts revenge for his death.
Tiger-style kung fu, practiced and showcased throughout the film, is also called the "White Eyebrow system," based on the characteristics of the tiger, and was perfected by Taoist Priest Bak Mei. In some scenes in the movie, the Priest White Lotus seemingly cannot be touched or harmed. Legend tells that Priest Bak Mei trained so thoroughly that blows to his body and strikes by weapons actually caused little or no injury.