Trivia

"El Chapo" (Joaquín Guzmán Loera) is planning to sue Netflix and Spanish speaking network Univision for allegedly defaming him with a TV series about his past life of conducting illegal activity.

The house where the Mexican actress seen working in LA, CA is the same house used in Narcos, where Berna brings agent Pena for a meeting to contact Los pepes.

Several characters are purposefully never named in the show - most notably the character of the president, who remains the key evil force in the background, and who actually represents Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

A number of characters in the show are amalgams of real-life characters from Mexican crime, politics, media, and public life - most notably, the scheming major character "Conrado del Sol", who does not strictly represent one single person, but who is believed to have been based primarily on Genaro García Luna.

While the show uses a "work of fiction" disclaimer and almost all characters aside from Joaquín Guzmán Loera have fictitious names, most of them are actually very closely based on the biographies and deeds of real figures from Mexican crime, politics, media, and public life. Physical similarities between the actors and the characters whom they would represent was a major factor during the casting process, and make-up was subsequently used to increase their likenesses to the real-life figures even further - sometimes, as in the case of the major secondary character of "Ramon Avendano" (i.e. Ramon Arellano) in seasons I and II, causing the actors to look nearly like mirror images of their real-life counterparts.