The movie was banned in Sweden due to excessive horror. The ban was finally lifted in 1972.
Over 102 years later, virtually all of the exteriors are still intact in the cities of Wismar and Lübeck.
Count Orlok is only blinks once on screen, near the end of Act One.
All known prints and negatives were destroyed under the terms of settlement of a lawsuit by Bram Stoker's widow. The film would subsequently resurface through second-generation reels in other countries.
The film was loosely based on the Bram Stoker book but the characters' names were changed in an attempt to prevent legal action (which failed). The subtitles were translated into French, then when the film went to the USA into English, but with Stoker's original character names used. In the meantime the original prints were destroyed because of the legal action, so the original subtitles were lost. The American version went to the UK, and then was translated back into German for a release there. When restorers were about to make a definitive version, they looked through a number of archives. Unfortunately, all of the prints they found had the changed subtitles so they gave up hope of being able to recover the originals. They later heard of a good print in an East German archive. When they got there, they found out that the print had been loaned out. The restorers were then offered to have a look at another print from the archive, which wasn't considered as good as the first. When the restorers observed that print, they discovered that it had the original subtitles. It had been sitting there for half a century and nobody had noticed.