The movie is based on the real life real-estate business man Jürgen Schneider, who invested in various buildings around Germany and got bankrupt. He also called 50 million marks "Peanuts", which is not only the title of the movie but also became the anti-word of the year 1994. It ruined the name of "Deutsche Bank". In 1995 Schneider was arrested and put to jail for 6 years and 9 months.
The real Jürgen Schneider tried to prohibit the movie before the premiere due to the infringement of his personal rights. The court ruled against him since it was obvious for the audience that this is a satire and not a realistic recreation of the actual events.
The news paper names that are showed in the movie are all parodies of actual German press:
- Financial Magazine: A parody of "Financial Times"
- "Wirtschaftsbild" (Economy picture): A parody of "Wirtschaftswoche" (Economy Week)
- "Kapital" (Capital): a parody of "Capital", a German economy magazine
- "Farbige" (The colored): A parody of the boulevard magazine "Bunte" (the colored)
- Die Zeitung (The newspaper): a parody of the daily newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine"
When arriving in Leipzig the orchestra at the main station is greeting Dr. Schuster with the anthem of the former GDR instead of the anthem of Germany. This can be seen as a reference to an actual event from 1995, where Germany's president Roman Herzog was visiting Brazil and was welcomed with the Anthem of the GDR instead of Germany.
Ulrich Mühe also starred in "Schtonk! (1992)", another satire which is based on an actual event in Germany. In both movies the main character is cheating the society for profit and has to escape with his wife at the end.