- Creator Breakdown: Several of the novels address Stout's political issues:
- The Doorbell Rang takes a pretty dim view of the FBI. In addition to his outrage over the general disclosure of the Bureau's widespread corruption and unethical practices, Rex Stout had himself come under suspicion and been harassed for suppose pro-communist sympathies.
- A Family Affair is Stout's response to the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation. Let us simply say Stout was not happy with Nixon.note
- The obnoxious Lt. Rowcliff was heavily based on Stout's commanding officer while in the Navy.
- Creator's Favorite Episode: Stout named Some Buried Caesar as his favorite.
- Executive Meddling:
- The covers of the volumes published in the 70's and 80's were horribly inaccurate to the stories inside them; the cover blurbs were worse. It's claimed that the marketing department thought it best to make Stout reprints look like thrillers instead of mysteries, since the traditional mystery had gained a reputation among the general public of being only fit for "pathetic spinsters" who found thrillers and suspense novels too "scary".
- In Over My Dead Body, Wolfe says that he was born in the US. In every other story that makes mention of his place of birth, he says it was Montenegro. Word of God, in the form of a letter from Rex Stout to his authorized biographer, John McAleer says:"In the original draft of Over My Dead Body Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from The American Magazine, supported by [publishers] Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."
- Magnum Opus Dissonance: Rather refreshingly for the mystery genre, with a rather lengthy list of authors who created famous detectives they went on to despise, this seems to have been averted. Rex Stout had a lengthy and varied publishing career behind him even before he wrote his first Wolfe novel, of which few works are remembered or loved as much; however, he appears to have been perfectly okay with this, to the point where from the late 1940s on he pretty much devoted himself solely to writing stories about Wolfe and Archie in large part because he enjoyed writing them so much.
- Outlived Its Creator: Following Stout's death in 1975, his estate gave Robert Goldsborough authorization to continue the series. Between 1986 and 1994 he wrote seven more Nero Wolfe novels (with the last one being an apparent send-off to the series), and then he came back to write six more from 2012 to 2018 (including a prequel, Archie Meets Nero Wolfe) with no end in sight. Reception has been mixed at best.
- Technology Marches On: In The Mother Hunt (1963), Wolfe conducts an elaborate investigation to confirm whether a foundling is the son of the deceased Richard Valdon. Just two decades later, DNA testing could have done the job.
- What Could Have Been: There have been multiple attempts to adapt the novels, with some not getting very far.
- A pilot was shot in 1959, starring William Shatner as Archie Goodwin. Although it was well received, the adaptation didn't go to series over disagreements whether episodes should be 30 or 60 minutes in length.
- Orson Welles had a decades-long interest in playing Wolfe, but Rex Stout wasn't interested in authorizing any adaptations in his lifetime. When Paramount finally secured the rights and arranged to shoot pilots in 1977 and 1980 (in which William Conrad took on the title role), Welles bowed out each time as he wanted to do a limited series of specials and not a weekly show.
- The 1977 pilot was meant to be broadcast and lead into a regular weekly series, but ABC thought it was too dialogue heavy and shelved it. It was finally aired in 1979 as a one-off special, a year after Thayer David, who played Wolfe, passed away.
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