When the film was screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2000, it had a record number of walkouts. One woman, who had actually sat through the entire film, immediately walked out of the ensuing Q&A session past the stage, and hissed "You are sick!" at director Takashi Miike, much to his amusement and delight. At the Swiss premiere, someone passed out and needed emergency room attention.

Described by Quentin Tarantino as a "true masterpiece if ever there was one," in a video discussing his favorite films released between 1992 and 2009.

Heavy metal musician and horror movie director/actor Rob Zombie admitted he found this movie to be the most creepy and unsettling of any horror movie he's ever watched.

Audition was shot in approximately three weeks, which was about one more week than usual for Takashi Miike's films at the time.

The film was slated at one point to get an English-language American remake, in the 2000's when Asian horror remakes were over saturating the market. Negotiations fell through however, and it never got made.

Takashi Miike has said that he doesn't see this movie as horror, because in Japan horror is considered supernatural and this is about real life; but in the West, horror has a wider purview.

Audition has been read as feminist or misogynistic by different people, based on various scenes. However, Ryû Murakami (novelist), Daisuke Tengan (screenwriter) and Takashi Miike (director) have always denied any overt feminist angles in the movie. In fact, film scholars have pointed out that Western feminism has very little traction in Japan, and depictions of abuse against women (such as rape and violence) in Japanese popular culture are not only very common, they are also broadly accepted. Most cinema experts therefore see the movie as an abrupt reversal of these gender roles, out of an expression of male fear of what women could be capable of.

Takashi Miike felt that the book was a love letter to a woman; so the script was made as a reply from that same woman.

As a publicity gimmick, barf bags were recieved by viewers out at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to those attending the midnight screening of this movie. Similar bags were given during the Stockholm International Film Festival. Reportedly watching this film caused one viewer to throw up and another to faint.

Takashi Miike was so excited when he got an offer to direct the film that he did not sleep for three days.

The film adapts the "Diamond is Unbreakable" storyline from the "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure" comics. This storyline was chosen specifically because of its Japanese-centred location; most other Jojo tales involve foreigners.

In the manga and anime, the Nijimura brothers' father never had a name. In this film, he is named Mansaku.