After the success of The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) and The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), Comedy Central and CBS re-aired all six episodes of this series in the summer of 1991. Producers wanted to include John Belushi's "guest star" appearance in Testimony of Evil (Dead Men Don't Laugh) (1982), which had been cut due to Belushi's death. The footage could not be located, and is now presumed lost or destroyed.
ABC wanted the show to have a laugh track, but David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker wouldn't give in.
According to an interview with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker on the Nerdist podcast, the original choice for Frank Drebin was Robert Stack, but he turned it down. Leslie Nielsen was their second choice.
When the ABC TV Network cancelled the series after 6 episodes, ABC entertainment president Tony Thomopoulos claimed it was because "the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it." TV Guide magazine would condemn that statement as "The most stupid reason a network ever gave for ending a series." However, the producers of the series were privately glad that the network did cancel them so soon because they felt they were rapidly running out of story material and had lost confidence they could continue for a full season. Fortunately, they were able to later continue the series, beginning with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), as a theatrical film series with the medium's inherently far less demanding production schedules.
John Belushi filmed a cameo "guest star" appearance for episode six, "Testimony of Evil (Dead Men Don't Laugh)", showing him underwater wearing a pair of cement shoes. He died before the episode aired, so a new sequence was filmed with William Conrad.