Author Existence Failure: Peter Sellers died during planning of the unmade "Romance of the Pink Panther". As a result, the project was scrapped, though Edwards would make "Trail" two years later.
Development Hell: The reboot was in the works since the turn of the millennium.
Fake Nationality: Peter Sellers was an Englishman playing a Frenchman, but beyond this, the character of Clouseau affects several disguises in the course of the series that require him to be various other highly-caricatured nationalities.
In fact, many characters had this as well:
Italian Maria Gambrelli in "Shot" was played by German Elke Sommer.
Neither Herbert Lom (Dreyfus) nor Graham Stark (Hercule La Joy in "Shot" , Auguste Balls in "Revenge" and a German Motel Owner in "Strikes Again") were French.
Fake Russian: Lesley Anne-Down (British) as the Russian spy Olga in Strikes Again.
Apparently Scar has taken an interest in fencing and became an instructor in France who trained The Tornado serial thief.
Money, Dear Boy: Partial motivation for Sellers being willing to reprise the role of Clouseau in the 1970s. (The other was getting enough clout to get Being Theregreenlit.)
Old Shame: Alan Arkin, not surprisingly, considers making Inspector Clouseau a mistake. He has rarely spoken much about the film in the years since, but one time Arkin did explain why he took up the role. In the late-60s he was becoming a fairly well-known actor and thought that as a movie actor, he could do whatever role was offered to him, and he could do it easily. He admits that the failure of Inspector Clouseauknocked him off his high horse.
The Other Darrin: The Clouseaus besides Sellers, of course, but several other recurring characters were played by different actors from film to film (see the trope entry) in the classic series. In the rebooted series, Kevin Kline played Dreyfus in the first entry, but was replaced with John Cleese in the second.
Throw It In: Occasionally; for instance, the "synchronized watches" bit in Shot was largely improvised by Peter Sellers and Graham Stark.
Also Clouseau's line 'a rit of fealous jage' was supposedly a slip up (there is an outtake where Sellers and George Sanders both crack up at it) which was later re-filmed as part of the script.
Peter Ustinov was originally cast as Clouseau, but left over a salary dispute.
Sophia Loren and Walter Matthau were considered for Shot but were replaced when Blake Edwards stepped in.
The Revenge shoot in Hong Kong was almost derailed by monsoon season; the threat of the rain keeping up had Blake Edwards having his assistants check up on Rio de Janeiro as an alternative location.
With regards to the reboot, potential Clouseaus included Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, and Mike Myers. Myers was the most sought-after, but his asking fee was too high.
The Ant and the Aardvark, who appeared in supporting cartoons and bumpers on the 1970 Pink Panther, were voiced by comedian John Byner. The voices of the Ant and Aardvark closely resembled those of Dean Martin and Jackie Mason, respectively.
The David Niven-ish voice of the Panther in 1965's "Pink Ice" was done by impressionist Rich Little.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only available via dodgy torrent sites in Eastern Europe, and Kamuz TV's Argentinian-Spanish copies, but no official DVD release of all 3 series exists (for this 1993 one). You could get a DVD at one point, but it was only of Series 1, the 1993 series.
So it's left to fan petitions, then... for the full series release.
The complete first season is Available on Amazon.de
