Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson met for the second time while filming this movie. Wilson originally met Hanks in 1981 on the set of Bosom Buddies (1980) when she guest-starred in the episode All You Need Is Love (1981). However, their relationship wasn't kindled until they were reunited on the set of this movie. They married four years later.
The film was mildly controversial for its Coca-Cola drink scene, which played like a very deliberate product placement. The movie was made by TriStar Pictures, a division of Columbia Pictures, which was owned by the Coca-Cola Company. The film's co-screenwriter Ken Levine has explained: "We wrote that Coke scene in the first draft in 1980. It stayed in every draft and wound up on the screen. Originally, the movie was set up at MGM. After a couple of years, it went into turnaround, finally landing at HBO Silver Screen in partnership with TriStar. This was 1984. TriStar was a division of the Coca-Cola Company. No one from the studio ever asked that that scene be in. No one from the studio ever mentioned that scene period. A year later, the film was released, and we walked into a major shitstorm. I look back and think, all of this could have so easily been avoided if he just offered her a joint".
For authenticity, director Nicholas Meyer wanted two elephants to appear in the picture "on the grounds that two elephants look like Thailand while one elephant looks like you can't afford two elephants" Meyer once said.
Nicholas Meyer once said of this movie: "Anyone can see this is an affectionate spoof, and that the people who made this movie went out of their way to endorse the Peace Corps, and if you can twit the Army in movies, why not the Peace Corps? There are silly little things I kept throwing in . . . But the popular culture references are affectionate reflections on part of the great contributions to the literature of the cinema. Civilized, educated people will recognize these things."
The picture was in development for around six years before its production got green-lit.