FAQ

According to Dutch behavioural biologist Maarten 't Hart (who was hired as a consultant due to his expertise of lab rats), the rats were treated inhumanely during production, so much so that he no longer wanted to cooperate after seeing their mistreatment. During the trip from Hungary, poor conditions forced the rats to resort to eating each other. Then, the white rats were dyed grey by being dipped into a boiling liquid; around half of them died during this process. Apparently, they licked the dye off almost as soon as they'd changed colour anyway.

The German version and the English/International version differ severely from each other, since Herzog shot the movie in both languages, meaning that he didn't just hire voice-actors to dub all the German lines but he decided to shoot the movie in German as well as in English. This means that several scenes have different camera angles or some scenes were conceived differently, i.e. it is possible that a dialogue that was shown in a close-up shot in the German version might be shown in a total shot in the international version.