During the rehearsals of his transformation scene, Zero Mostel refused to break any of the props, wanting to leave the destruction until he was actually shooting the scene.
The Broadway production of "Rhinoceros" by Eugène Ionesco and translated by Derek Prouse opened at the Longacre Theater in New York City on January 9, 1961 and ran for two hundred forty performances.
Zero Mostel won the 1961 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for "Rhinoceros" as John, and re-created his role in this filmed production.
The cane that Zero Mostel carries in the movie is the same wolf-head cane bought by Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941).
Director Tom O'Horgan stated that he cast Gene Wilder as Stanley because of the way he had worked with Zero Mostel in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967).
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