Originally intended to be a sketch within The Meaning of Life (1983), Terry Gilliam filmed the segment with his own crew and soundstage. He went way over budget, and a five-minute scene became a thirty-minute short movie. The Pythons decided that they couldn't use the sequence in chronological order as featured in the script (right after the Very Big Corporation of America staff meeting) because it would slow the movie down, so they decided to use it at the beginning, as a special presentation, and it was reduced to sixteen minutes.
The skyscrapers that appear at the end are replicas of actual buildings from a variety of cities. The IDS Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Terry Gilliam's hometown, is one of the replicas.
The central model on display inside the boardroom, contains the "wings" of a Star Wars Tie Fighter. Probably Terry Gilliam's thank you after George Lucas had commended him for his Space Battle segment in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979).
The real building used for the location shoot was Lloyd's Register of Shipping headquarters in London, on the corner of Fenchurch Street and Lloyd's Avenue. It can be seen most clearly in the weigh anchor sequence.