According to a January 2018 article in Business Insider, a group of psychiatrists studied 400 movies and identified 126 psychopathic characters. They chose Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton Chigurh as the most clinically accurate portrayal of a psychopath.
In the novel, Sheriff Bell says of the dope-dealers, "Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge." Cormac McCarthy set the story in 1980. In 1979, Federal Judge John Howland Wood was shot and killed in San Antonio by Texas free-lance contract killer Charles Harrelson, father of Woody Harrelson (Carson Wells).
When directors Joel Coen and Ethan Coen approached Javier Bardem about playing Chigurh, he said, "I don't drive, I speak bad English and I hate violence." The Coens responded, "That's why we called you." Bardem said he took the role because his dream was to be in a Coen Brothers film.
An unforeseen expense for the film was the make-up department buying expensive fake blood at eight hundred dollars a gallon. Joel Coen realized why they were spending so much when it came time to film the scene where Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the aftermath of a shoot-out with lots of extras lying around dead in the dust. Ordinary fake blood (made with sugar) would have meant the extras would have been crawling with bugs and ants, while the insects had no interest in the expensive stuff.
While on-location in Marfa, Texas, the movie Petróleo sangriento (2007) was shooting nearby. One day, while filming a wide shot of the landscape, directors Joel Coen and Ethan Coen had to halt shooting for the day when a gigantic cloud of dark smoke floated conspicuously into view. Paul Thomas Anderson was testing the pyrotechnics of an oil derrick set ablaze on the set of his film. The Coens resumed filming the next day, when the smoke finally dissipated. A year and a half later, both films were the leading contenders at the Academy Awards. Both were also bankrolled by the same two companies: Paramount Vantage (now-defunct) and Miramax (now owned by Vantage's parent studio).