In a Reddit AMA discussion, Jeff Bridges said that he enjoyed making the movie with the cast and crew, but attributed its failure to studio interference. Bridges said, "The suits just cut it against the grain, and, I thought, screwed it up." He described the film as "underwhelming".
Jeff Bridges has an extensive display of his doodles on his website. In the first scene at R.I.P.D. Boston, his doodle of Proctor is on the clipboard that he throws on the desk.
The Boston Police cruisers and ID badges throughout the movie bear the insignia of the same fictional district A-8 featured in many movies including That's My Boy (2012) and The Town (2010).
The license plate of the VCR Repair car has the license plate "314 159" - the first 6 digits of Pi (3.14159).
This movie has been compared to Men in Black (1997), in that they both deal with secret government agencies contending with otherworldly beings. Jeff Bridges is playing the same kind of character that his good friend and Blown Away (1994) co-star Tommy Lee Jones played in the Men In Black trilogy.