Trivia

One of the most well known scene of the movie, where commissario Auricchio (played by Lino Banfi) sing the song "Benvenuti a sti frocioni" was ad-libbed by the actor surprising even the actors and the guitar player in the scene.

The plot is based on the one of The Whole Town's Talking (1935).

Italian censorship visa # 77421 delivered on 19-12-1981.

First of two movies about Paolo Villaggio's character Giandomenico Fracchia, following a TV mini-series of 1975. Villaggio proposed the character for the first time in the sunday TV show Quelli della domenica in 1968 for state-owned broadcaster RAI, marking Villaggio's debut on television. In the same show he also introduced the character of German chaotic magician Prof. Kranz, forming together with Ugo Fantozzi the trio of characters made famous by Villaggio's performances. Giandomenico Fracchia is a shy guy acting slavish with his superiors but toughly with the colleagues. In 1969 he proposed the character again in the TV show that followed the previous one on RAI sunday's schedule, È domenica ma senza impegno, where he introduced the characters of his harsh boss and of an insistent salesman, both played by Gianni Agus, (who plays in this movie the role of his boss Dr. Orimbelli) and the gag of the bean bag chair Sacco. The duo Villaggio-Agus (with the latter sometimes replaced by Silvio Spaccesi) reprised then these sketches in several TV shows. In some sketches it's stated that Ugo Fantozzi is one of his colleagues, while in the novel books of Fantozzi Fracchia is reported to be the organizing figure of his company, a role which was given to Renzo Filini (Gigi Reder) in the movies.

Although, outside from the movies, often stated to be colleagues (but never seen together on screen), there are several similarities between Paolo Villaggio's characters Giandomenico Fracchia and Ugo Fantozzi: they are both shy and insecure, they work for a big company and act slavish with their bosses, who treat them badly. Both are in unrequited love with a female colleague (although Fantozzi being married with a daughter, while Fracchia is a single), drive a cheap car and dress in almost the same unfashionable way. In the first two movies of the Fantozzi series, Fantozzi (1975) and Il secondo tragico Fantozzi (1976) directed by Luciano Salce, the character of Ugo Fantozzi seems slightly more confident than Fracchia, but starting from Fantozzi contro tutti (1980), which marked the beginning of Neri Parenti's direction of the series movies, the personality of Fantozzi was mostly unified with the one of Fracchia.