Creator's Oddball: While The Master and Margarita is a largely lighthearted and satiric novel with religious overtones, the majority of Bulgakov's works are dark and realistic stories on par with works of Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski in terms of cynicism and desperation.
The Master's career is to some extent based on Bulgakov's own, and Margarita on Bulgakov's wife Yelena. Bulgakov burned the manuscript for an early version of The Master and Margarita out of despair of being unable to get it published, just as the Master does with his novel, although Bulgakov did not get it back the way the Master does and instead had to rewrite it from scratch.
The comment that "manuscripts do not burn" is based on real events, however; he recovered several burnt notebooks because they had been copied by the NKVD, and one of his friends was able to request some copies.
Tropes from adaptations:
California Doubling: Since Moscow doesn't look much like its 1930s self nowadays, for the Bortko TV series they used the generally more well-preserved St. Petersburg instead. Several panoramas were shown as noticeably edited recordings of the said era.
Dawson Casting: In the book, Woland is described as looking "a little over forty". In the Bortko TV series he was played by Oleg Basilashvili, who was about seventy at the time.
