The Smile, while he does have an appearance similar to Bob Kane's The Joker, is meant to be more a parody of that character and Dick Tracy villains.
Rex Russell is based off of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, Dick Tracy, and other classic film noir detectives.
The idea for the film came from a short story, the writer (Cole Meyer), wrote in his Creative Writing class.
All makeup in the film was done by Matt Stice. During appliances to the actors, power went out two times and Matt would have to work through it along with a stuffy, hot hotel room that the production shot in.