Producers of the film A Shot in the Dark (1964), which was stalled in preproduction due to several problems, decided to fire director Anatole Litvak and asked Blake Edwards (some say on Sellers's recommendation) to take over. Edwards said he would do it if he could change the story to include something he was familiar with, and that something was the character of Inspector Clouseau. The script was refashioned to become a sequel of sorts to The Pink Panther, although Clouseau's wife is absent and there is no mention of the prison term he was sentenced to at the end of the original movie.

A Shot in the Dark recycles the spinning globe site gag from this movie, but with a twist that makes it fresh again.

A Shot in the Dark introduced the character of Chief Inspector Dreyfus, Clouseau's superior, who became a mainstay of the numerous sequels to follow, including The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), and Son of the Pink Panther (1993), all directed by Edwards. Because Sellers died in 1980, only archival footage of him in the role appears in Trail of..., and in Curse of..., the character is missing and being searched for by another detective, played by Ted Wass.

The final sequel, Son of the Pink Panther, features Italian actor Roberto Benigni as Jacques Gambrelli, the son of Clouseau and Maria Gambrelli, the main female character in A Shot in the Dark, played here by Claudia Cardinale, Princess Dahla in the original movie.

The permutations and reappearances of characters get more confusing as the series goes on. Sir Charles Litton (spelled with an "i" instead of the original "y"), returns in The Return of the Pink Panther, played by Christopher Plummer (David Niven apparently still not over being upstaged by Sellers in the first movie). Although at the end of the original, Lytton/Niven has ended up with Clouseau's wife Simone (Capucine), here he has a Lady Claudine Litton, played by Catherine Schell. However, when the character appears again in Trail of the Pink Panther, played by Niven again, his wife is Lady Simone Litton, played by Capucine, Sellers's ex from the first movie. Niven and Capucine came back for Curse of the Pink Panther, as did Robert Wagner in his original role as George Lytton.

The only sequel not directed by Edwards was the British-made flop Inspector Clouseau (1968), starring Alan Arkin as the title character and directed by Bud Yorkin.

The story was "rebooted" as The Pink Panther (2006) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009), starring Steve Martin as Clouseau. In the first, Kevin Kline plays Dreyfus, and in the second, he's played by John Cleese. The 2006 film features the Pink Panther diamond that gave the series its name.

The most famous by-product of the whole affair, however, is the Pink Panther cartoon character, the only popular character born strictly from a movie title sequence. The year after the movie, he was given his own cartoon independent of the film, The Pink Phink (1964), and appeared in hundreds of animated shorts since then. He is unique among cartoon characters in that he has a high level of elegance and, except for two exceptions that proved to be highly unpopular, never speaks. He also starred in more than 80 issues of his own comic book from 1971 to 1984. The panther twice had his own TV series, in 1969 and 1993, which also featured an animated Clouseau, and he was featured in a short-lived series that starred his offspring, Pink and Panky, Pink Panther and Sons (1984). The character is so well known he was even chosen to be a commercial spokesperson, most notably for Owens Corning Fiberglass Insulation (which is pink in color). General Foods briefly issued a cereal called Pink Panther Flakes, and Natural Choice issued a Pink Panther Pink Lemonade.<

Years before this picture, David Niven nailed the kind of character he plays here in the sophisticated caper comedy Raffles (1939).

According to the DVD commentary by Blake Edwards, the chase scene was an homage to a similar sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940).

Some have claimed, rather weakly, that Clouseau's name was an homage to French director Henri Georges Clouzot while his demeanor was inspired by the bumbling M. Hulot in the comedies of Jacques Tati.

A remake of The Pink Panther was rumored to be in the works for comic actor Mike Myers around 2002 (perhaps the same version to star Steve Martin in 2006). Myers claimed he got his earliest lessons in comedy when his father would wake him up in the middle of the night to watch Peter Sellers whenever he came on television.