Trivia

Some of the main puppet cast are based on real people including:

• Troy Tempest was modeled on the facial features of American actor James Garner.
• Marina was modeled on Brigitte Bardot.
• Atlanta Shore was modeled on Lois Maxwell.
• Titan was based on a young Laurence Olivier.
• Surface Agent X-2-Zero is modeled on Claude Rains but his voice is imitative of Peter Lorre.

Gerry Anderson said that he did not explicitly instruct the sculptors to base Troy on Garner; instead, he named him simply to help them visualize the character, as he could see that they were struggling with his original brief (which merely called for Troy to be square-jawed and heroic-looking).

The total cost of the production for Stingray was approximately £1 million (£21 million in 2020). The budget per episode was £20,000, which enabled AP Films, whose earlier productions had been in black and white, to film in Eastmancolor. Though Stingray would debut in black and white in the UK, the switch to color filming was intended to increase the series' chances of being bought by a network in the US, where color TV broadcasts were already common. During the production of Stingray, AP Films became the UK's largest color film consumer.

According to background information produced by Century 21 for its publications, "Stingray" takes place a few years prior to El capitán Escarlata (1967), with some WASP personnel becoming members of the later SPECTRUM. None of this was indicated on screen, however.

The original red used on the uniforms had to be changed as it was coming out as a very black Nazi style uniform on black & white TV sets, and also made some details indistinct.

Voice actor Robert Easton based the character of Phone's Southern American tones on his performance in Viaje al fondo del mar (1961), in which he had played a Southern radio operator called Sparks. Also in the movie was Peter Lorre whom Eaton did an impression of on set, which is the same voice he uses as Surface Agent X-2-Zero.