During filming of the battle sequences, many of the extras got so into their characters that they caused real injury to one another. At the end of one shooting day, a total of 60 injuries were treated at the production's hospital tent.
The Babylonian orgy sequence alone cost $200,000 when it was shot. That's nearly twice the overall budget of Naissance d'une nation (1915), another D.W. Griffith film and, at the time, the record holder for most expensive picture ever made.
D.W. Griffith was forced to reshoot the sequence of the crucifixion because certain organizations were saying that Griffith shot too many Jewish extras around the cross and not enough Romans. Griffith then burned the footage and reshot the scene with more Roman extras.
After filming wrapped, the Los Angeles Fire Department cited the Babylonian set, seen in the fourth story, as a fire hazard and ordered it to be torn down. D.W. Griffith discovered that he had run out of money and, therefore, was unable to finance its demolition. For nearly four years, the set stood derelict and crumbling, on the lot of the studio on Prospect Ave, at the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Hollywood Blvd., becoming a notable landmark, as the first such exterior set ever built in Hollywood, until it was finally taken down in 1919. By then it had fallen apart enough for it to be dismantled at a sufficiently lower cost.
Joseph Henabery was hired to shoot some additional scenes of semi-nude slave girls when the front office declared that the film needed "more sex".