Instead of having the usual 555 prefix used in movies and television, a phone number used by God (Morgan Freeman) was an actual phone number in many U.S. area codes, causing owners of that phone number to be bombarded with calls. For the video release, this number was changed to 555-0123. The phone number used by Bruce later in the film was used by a radio station in Colorado and a woman in Florida, both of whom were deluged with calls wanting to talk with God. The producers bought these two phone numbers used in the film to stop the problems.
(at around 39 mins) The monkey used in the alley scene is the same monkey that was featured in Estallido (1995) and that played Marcel on the television series Friends (1994) also starring Jennifer Aniston. It also starred against Jim Carrey in both of the Ace Ventura movies. Aniston's Friends costar Courtney Cox also played Jim Carrey's girlfriend in the first Ace Ventura movie.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Qatar banned the film for its "sacrilegious content" by portraying God as an ordinary man. Egypt and also Malaysia eventually lifted the initial ban by giving the film the highest age rating (18 and older in Malaysia).
The movie is set in Buffalo, New York because Jim Carrey grew up in Toronto, Ontario, just north of Buffalo, and watched WKBW-TV Channel 7 Eyewitness News as a kid. In those days, Irv Weinstein anchored Eyewitness News and he was famous for his staccato delivery and use of alliterative phrases like "Pistol Packing Punks" and "Buffalo Blaze Busters." Also, Irv Weinstein was the first news anchor to use the phrase, "It's 11 o'clock, do you know where your children are?"