Wacky Races was inspired by the 1965 comedy film The Great Race, which similarly featured eccentric racers competing across a long-distance road rally.

The show was originally intended by producer Heatter-Quigley as a game show in which children would guess the winner of each race and win prizes for correct answers, but CBS dropped these game-show elements during development. This makes Wacky Races the only non-game show ever produced by Heatter-Quigley.

The plot of Wacky Races, featuring racers on wacky vehicles using outlandish weapons to hinder opponents, is credited with inspiring the kart racing video game genre; its own video game adaptation debuted in 1991, preceding Nintendo's Super Mario Kart, which is often considered the foremost title of the genre.

In the PlayStation 2 game Wacky Races: Starring Dastardly and Muttley, players can finally let Dick Dastardly win a race, prompting the narrator to react with shock or disgust while Dastardly celebrates in surprise.

Fans in the United Kingdom, where the show was especially popular, built life-size working replicas of the race cars that are displayed annually at the Goodwood Festival of Speed; the collection was completed in 2008 with the addition of the Ant Hill Mob's Bulletproof Bomb.

Car manufacturer Vauxhall parodied Wacky Races in a 2006 UK television commercial for its Corsa cars, using the show's theme music and Muttley's iconic snicker, and Peugeot ran a similar Wacky Races-themed commercial in 2013 for Brazil, Spain, and Turkey.

British adult comic Viz published a one-off parody strip titled 'Wacky Racists,' recasting real-life controversial figures such as David Irving as Dick Dastardly and Oswald Mosley as Muttley.

Dick Dastardly and Muttley appeared as the main villains in the 2020 animated film Scoob!, with Rock and Gravel Slag making cameo appearances in a prehistoric gladiator scene and various Wacky Racers cars appearing as drawings on Dastardly's prison cell wall during the credits.