The shots of the twins onscreen together were accomplished through one of the first uses of computer-controlled moving-matte photography.
During filming, Jeremy Irons kept track of whether he was playing Elliott or Beverley by always playing one with his weight on the balls of his feet and the other with his weight on his heels.
Initially, Jeremy Irons had two separate dressing rooms and two separate wardrobes which he would use depending on which character he was playing at the time. Soon he realized that "the whole point of the story is you should sometimes be confused as to which is which," after which he moved to a single dressing room and mixed the wardrobes together, and found an "internal way" to play each character differently, using the Alexander technique to give them "different energy points," which gave them slightly different appearances.
Robert De Niro turned down the Mantle twins roles because he felt uncomfortable playing a gynecologist.
Working title: "Gemini". The studio didn't like it, and so switched to "Twins". This was changed to "Dead Ringers" after Ivan Reitman, who had produced two of David Cronenberg's early films, approached Cronenberg about purchasing the rights to use the title "Twins". This title was then used for the Danny DeVito/Arnold Schwarzenegger film Anh Em Song Sinh (1988).
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