During the filming of one scene, the controls for the animatronic anaconda shorted out, causing it to completely lose control. Some of the footage is included in the movie.
The Amazonian film shoot was occasionally disrupted by the fact that several cast members were deathly afraid of snakes.
The CGI for the anacondas cost $100,000 per second.
Contrary to popular rumor, the movie was not filmed in the Dominican Republic. Most of the river scenes were filmed on the Rio Negro, near Manaus, Brazil. The rest were filmed at the Los Angeles Arboretum.
The film makes mention of the Candiru, a tiny catfish (also known as the Vampirefish) which has been attributed with the peculiar behavior of swimming into the human body through the urethra (in men) or the vagina (in women), where it lodges itself with its spines. This is not as common an occurrence as the film implies. Only one such incident is known to have happened to a man where a small catfish travelled into the urethra while he was urinating in a river. This account has been corroborated by Jeremy Wade in River Monsters - Amazon Flesh Eaters.