Trivia

On the DVD short documentary, Claude Rains' daughter Jessica Rains tells of a time when her father brought her to see a re-release of this movie in the theater in Pennsylvania in 1950. It was bitterly cold and his face was completely covered by a hat and scarf. When he spoke to ask for the tickets, the attendant immediately recognized his voice and wanted to let them in for free. Rains was quite upset at this and demanded that he pay full price.

In order to achieve the effect that Claude Rains wasn't there when his character took off the bandages, James Whale had Rains dressed completely in black velvet and filmed him in front of a black velvet background.

Claude Rains' daughter Jessica Rains was born in 1938, 5 years after this movie was released. The first time she ever saw her father in a movie was in 1950, when he took her to a showing of 'The Invisible Man' in a small Pennsylvania theater. While the film was playing, Rains was telling his daughter all about how it was made. The other theater patrons stopped watching the movie and instead listened to Rains' anecdotes.

When screenwriter R.C. Sherriff came to Hollywood to write this film, he asked the staff at Universal Pictures for a copy of the H.G. Wells novel he was supposed to be adapting. They didn't have one, all they had were 14 "treatments" done by previous writers on the project, including one set in Czarist Russia and another set on Mars. Sherriff eventually found a copy of the novel in a secondhand bookstore, read it, thought it would make an excellent picture as it stood, and wrote a script that, unlike Universal's Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), was a closer adaptation of the book. This was fortunate, because Wells had negotiated script approval when he sold the rights.

During scenes with Una O'Connor as the hysterical pub landlady, James Whale struggled to control his own laughter, as he adored O'Connor's humor.

Dwight Frye: (at around 57 mins) The reporter who offers suggestions to the police chief. He is best known for playing Renfield in Dracula (1931), Fritz in Frankenstein (1931), and Karl Glutz in Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Walter Brennan: (at around 33 mins) in an uncredited early role as the owner of the bicycle in the bar scene investigation. He would later become an international film star as well as playing "Grandpa Amos" in the 1957-1963 American television comedy, The Real McCoys (1957).

John Carradine: (at around 44 mins) as the tipster who phones police with an idea on catching the Invisible Man. Director James Whale would give him another uncredited bit in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Carradine started getting screen billing under his real name in 1936, six years after arriving in Hollywood.