The janitor, bringing in a small tray of food, is astonished to see the tenant and family enjoying a grand dinner in the magically furnished room.

[3] The Diabolic Tenant is an expanded treatment of plot ideas that had previously appeared in an earlier Méliès film, Satan in Prison.

Méliès's concept of large things coming from a small bag returned in later films, including Walt Disney's Mary Poppins and Jerry Lewis's Hardly Working.

[3] The film's special effects were created using pyrotechnics, stage machinery, and furniture props moved by people hidden inside them, including the young André Méliès.

[3] John Frazer, in a 1979 book on Méliès, argued that The Diabolic Tenant could be read as an autobiographical film about the director's own financial difficulties.