This movie took almost three and a half years to complete.
Locations in this movie's fantastical "book world" are primarily based on three novels, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson, for the segment set in Horror, and "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville and "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, for the segment set in Adventure. The segment set in Fantasy uses various fairy tale tropes, but also the Queen of Hearts (shouting the famous line, "Off with their heads!") from "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, and the beanstalk from "Jack and the Beanstalk". Some of the other books seen or used in this movie are "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the hound has a cameo in the movie when it jumps out of the book), "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne (the giant squid is chosen by Adventure) and the Middle Eastern fairy tale collection "One Thousand and One Nights" (Fantasy summons the flying Magic Carpet from it). Also, the character of Horror (the anthropomorphic book) resembles Quasimodo, the tragic protagonist of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo.
Frankenstein's Monster does not appear in the final cut, but is seen in the sneak peeks, trailers, and television spots for the theatrical and home entertainment releases around the world from 1993 to 1995. It also appeared in deleted scenes, behind the scenes, and video games.
Christopher Lloyd's character, Mr. Dewey, is named after the Dewey Decimal System, a system of organizing books in a library. He also resembles Charles Dickens.