- Breakaway Advertisement: That famous publicity photo
◊ of Sean Connery in the Zed outfit is arguably better-known and viewed than the film itself. - Creator Backlash:
- Sean Connery wasn't all that enthusiastic about this project and largely took the role to avoid being typecast as James Bond.
- John Boorman made the film while in the grips of a serious drug habit, and to this day freely admits he has no idea what most of it is supposed to mean and that large portions of it are simply pointless.
- DVD Commentary: The commentary is particularly interesting in that John Boorman not only admits large parts of the film are unnecessary, but openly admits the movie was made on drugs.
- Enforced Method Acting: The sequence at the end where Zed and Consuella grow old together had to be reshot twice due to technical difficulties. Unfortunately, Sean Connery hated wearing prosthetics, which is why he looks so grumpy in that sequence (not helping is the fact that this is the third time they had to shoot this whole sequence).
- Executive Meddling: The movie studio forced Boorman to add a prologue to help the movie make more sense. It didn't.
- Follow-Up Failure: This was Boorman's follow-up to Deliverance.
- Never Work with Children or Animals: A real baboon on the set attacked a double dressed in an ape suit who was portraying a baboon.
- No Budget: The movie was made so cheaply and salaries were so low that Sean Connery lived at John Boorman's house during production and they drove each other to and from the set in order to split the £5,000 that would have otherwise gone towards hiring a chauffeur, which the latter probably spent on cocaine.
- Playing Against Type: Apparently Sean Connery was attracted to the role because it was described to him as being as unlike James Bond as humanly possible.
- Real-Life Relative: Three of John Boorman's children appear in the flashback scene concerning the founding of the tabernacle: Daisy Boorman, Telsche Boorman, and Katrine Boorman.
- Referenced by...:
- Recurring Power Girl character Vartox is based on Connery's appearance in this film.
- The English dub of Voltes V in the Philippines renamed Prince Heinel as Zardoz for whatever reason.
- Shrug of God: By writer/director John Boorman. Since he was high on various drugs during filming, he's admitted that even he has no clue what parts of the film are about.
- Troubled Production: The film had various mild to moderate problems during production, including a lack of budget, difficulty finding convincing prop guns due to the UK and Irish governments heavily regulating all real and even replica guns due to The Troubles,note and the film's ending having to be reshot twice after various mishaps resulted in the footage being damaged, much to the annoyance of stars Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, who had to spend hours in make-up each time the ending was shot. However, by far the biggest issue was that director John Boorman was absolutely stoned off his head during most of the shoot, and kept rewriting scenes and adding new sequences on the fly, to the point where the editor was unable to assemble the footage into anything coherent, forcing Boorman to ADR in extra lines to try and get the film's storyline to somehow progress logically. The studio then forced him to film a prologue scene in order to make the storyline clearer, but most viewers seem to agree that the prologue, if anything, just made things even more confusing. To this day, Boorman himself admits to having absolutely no idea what most of the film means, beyond having a vague Who Wants to Live Forever? message, and considers it an old shame.
- What Could Have Been: Burt Reynolds was the first choice to star as Zed, but he dropped out due to an illness. Richard Harris was also offered the role, but he never responded.
- The radio spots for the film were narrated by none other than Rod Serling.
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