In 2002, "Punch Drunks" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", the only Stooge film to achieve such an honor.
The man who falls off the back of the truck when Larry drives it away ended up breaking his leg from the fall in real life.
The short is notable as being one of the few in which the Stooges are not an established trio at the beginning of the film.
This is the only one of their shorts that The Three Stooges wrote entirely themselves. Moe Howard wrote the treatment, and added Curly Howard and Larry Fine's names to it.
This is the first of several films in which a normally passive Curly sees, hears, or smells something that triggers a violent reaction from him. The idea would be reused again in Horses' Collars (1935), Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937) and Tassels in the Air (1938).