For this episode, Doug Naylor and Rob Grant were heavily inspired by The Terminator (1984) and the works of Harlan Ellison. Howard Goodall composed the Inquisitor's theme to be reminiscent of the synthesized theme to "The Terminator".
The sets are mainly made out of plastic and balsa wood. This causes problems. In this episode, there is a lot of running up and down the corridors of Red Dwarf, so to make it sound metallic the sound supervisor Keith Mayes re-recorded every footstep by walking on a metal grate in time to the actors on screen, then added an echo.
In a heat of Series 2 of Robot Wars (1998) (Which Craig Charles later hosted), a robot entered called 'Inquisitor' competed. When the people who made the bot met Craig on the podium, Craig asked: "Where does the name come from?" and the roboteer replied "Red Dwarf (1988)". Craig, in a joke responded "Never heard of it!"
The writers originally planned for the Inquisitor's first appearance with Thomas Allman to go out before the title montage and setting up the villain as a significant threat, however this idea was dropped and the titles are still the first sequence with the villain appearing after.
The 2000 AD comic strip "Judge Dredd", The Marvel comic "The Punisher" and RoboCop (1987) were major influences behind The Inquisitor.