Half the dialogue was ad-libbed.
Etsilopp, the weapon-wielding class of aliens that can lord over lowly classes, is backward for the Russian word for police.
When Uncle Vova and Gedevan arrive on Plyuk, Uncle Vova starts trying to figure out which desert (he insists on deserts in Soviet territory only) they could be in. The first one they come up with is Kara Kum, which is the desert leading to the Aral Sea disaster site in Karalpakstan, in which the water from the inland sea has dried, leaving ships and ghost towns - reminiscent of the setting of the film, only there covered in sand dunes.
Wef's cap is actually the codpiece from the discarded fighter pilot's suit, and Pepelats was just thrown together from scrap iron from the nearest dump welded together by a local plumber.
The movie has been released on DVD in Russia but has gained virtually no notice elsewhere, with the exception of Japan. This is largely due to the fact that there was no official release of the movie with English subtitles for a long time. While the movie was in the making, a censorship threat emerged due to the use of the word Ku (Koo) which sounded like the initials "K. U." of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR at the time, K. U. Chernenko. Chernenko who assumed the leadership in 1984, died in 1985, and this removed the danger.