[2] Kaufman was not a fan of sitcoms, but his manager, George Shapiro, convinced him that this would rocket him to stardom, where he would make a lot of money which he could then put into his own act, which became Andy's Funhouse.

Some fans have theorized that Latka may be from a fictional Baltic country-island named Caspiar, from whence Kaufman claimed "Foreign Man" came, but this was never explicitly addressed on any episode of Taxi.

This allowed him to broaden his comedic abilities with alternate personas such as the womanising American Vic Ferrari, the cowboy Harlow, the elegant Englishman Sir Geoffrey, and even Alex Rieger.

Around the same time as his marriage to Simka, Latka's alternate personalities are completely eradicated by Doctor Joyce Brothers and do not appear again for the remainder of the series.

In a two-part episode in the fifth season of the series, Latka is forced to have sex with a woman to stop her with his body heat from dying of hypothermia, and Simka contemplates doing the same with Alex in order to "repair" their marriage.