First among three movies starring Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard that was remade in Hollywood. Coincidentally, Richard's characters in the Hollywood version of this film and their third film, Les Fugitifs (1986), were both played by Martin Short.
There are two German dubbed versions for this film. The reason for this is that the original dubbing (supervised by Rainer Brandt) which was used for the theatrical showing of the movie was drastically different from the original version in terms of humor and vulgarity, so that the German TV ordered a new language track for the TV premiere of the movie which resembles the language and atmosphere of the original version of the movie much closer.
Most of the Mexican actors recited their dialogs in Spanish, and later they were dubbed in French.
On February 13, 1983, the Cinema Statuto in Turin, Italy, burned while screening the film, resulting in 64 deaths. Investigations revealed that the theater's owner locked the emergency exits to prevent people from sneaking in for free. The owner was subsequently convicted and given a 10 year prison sentence.
Writer/Director Francis Veber's original choice of stars for the film was Lino Ventura as Campana and Jacques Villeret as François Perrin, but Ventura refused to work with Villeret.