A. H. Giebler, in the 31 August 1918 Moving Picture World, visited the Jesse L. Lasky lot at Vine Street and Selma Avenue in Hollywood, CA, and made this report from the set of The Goat: "On this stage you will see a distinct novelty. The play being staged here is a movie of a movie. The story deals with life and work of the actors, and Donald Crisp, the director wearing the open-work effect straw hat, is going to take the lid off and show an eager and curious public some of the shameful tricks of the trade. The young lady with the verdant gown and blond curls is Rhea Mitchell. The other lady to the right wearing a similar dress and similar curls is no lady at all, but Fred Stone." That same week's Motion Picture News noted that Stone had completed three movies for Artcraft, "the last scenes being made for the subject now known as The Goat, during the past week." Donald Crisp had directed all three; the other two, Under the Top and Johnnie Get Your Gun, were released in early 1919.
       According to a Paramount Press Book, The Goat was acrobatic musical comedy star Fred Stone's first film. Known as the scarecrow in the stage production of The Wizard of Oz, Stone could perform all sorts of athletic feats, such as climbing the outside walls of buildings. An advertisement for the movie called him "the World's Greatest Acrobatic Comedian," and declared: "He takes some of the biggest risks you ever saw like oiled lighting—does a stunt on the roof of a building that makes your heart count one-two-three too fast for comfort, beats up a lot of actors who dared to don the German uniform—picks up a little girl from under the flying hoofs of a horse—and through it all does not bat an eyelash."
       The Goat was scenarist Frances Marion's last movie before taking time off to join the U.S. government's war effort as a propaganda writer.
       The film opened on Broadway at the Strand Theater for the week of 29 September 1918, according to the 12 October 1918 Moving Picture World. It opened the same day at the Dayton Theatre in Dayton, OH, as noted in the 19 October 1918 Moving Picture World.
       Wid's called The Goat "painfully forced hokum [that] merely serves as [a] skeleton for athletic stunts of star. Obvious and unfunny."
       The November 1918 Film Fun ran a full page of photographs from The Goat.
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of February 2021.