Southern superstar Rajnikant was supposed to imitate three Bollywood actors including Amitabh Bachchan for the Hindi version of Sivaji. The actor is believed to have refused outright to do so.

Rajni received kudos from critics and general public alike for his performance in Sivaji. For the Hindi version of the film, director Shankar decided to reshoot a song wherein the actor had to woo his girlfriend Shreya Saran. However, when the director explained the concept to him the actor had a problem. His condition was that he would do the song without imitating his friend and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. According to sources, Rajni was kicked by the concept as he realized that it would mean a lot to his fans in Bollywood. Also the song in Tamil, where he imitated Sivaji Ganeshan, Kamal Hasan MGR, went down very well with the audience. For the Hindi version, Shankar wanted him to imitate The Big B, Shah Rukh Khan and Dev Anand. But Rajni refused to spoof Bachchan, saying that he did not want to spoof someone as great as the Big B. Shankar had no choice but to relent and finally had to replace the Big B with Shammi Kapoor in the song.