ReBoot was initially conceived in 1984 by a British creative collective called The Hub, consisting of John Grace, Ian Pearson, Gavin Blair and Phil Mitchell, meaning the show had roughly eight years of development before production began.

Pearson and Blair had previously created some of the first widely seen CGI characters for the Dire Straits music video 'Money for Nothing', but at the time of ReBoot's conception the technology was not yet advanced enough to make the show as originally envisioned.

The setting of a computer system world was deliberately chosen because the technological constraints of early 1990s CGI made blocky-looking models and mechanical animation more feasible, turning a technical limitation into a stylistic choice.

The series was created on Silicon Graphics workstations using Softimage Creative Environment software, and 3D animation tests only began in earnest in 1990, with the show achieving its detailed look by 1991.

Broadcast Standards and Practices (BS&P) at ABC forced the animators to redesign the character Dot's breasts into a less curvy, lumpy shape nicknamed the 'monobreast' by staff, even though she was never depicted showing cleavage; this was reversed to more anatomically correct designs starting in season three after ties with ABC were severed.

In the episode 'Talent Night', a scene of Dot giving her brother Enzo a kiss on the chin was cut by censors over fears it could be seen as promoting incest, a decision co-creator Ian Pearson called 'one of the sickest things I've heard.'

The season 2 finale mocked the network censors by naming Megabyte's warships 'ABCs', a jab at the ABC network's Broadcast Standards and Practices that had constrained the show's content.

Before season three, the studio initially planned a feature film called 'Terabyte Rising' featuring flashbacks to the destruction of Mainframe's Twin City; the film was scrapped but its material was later reused for the fourth season's TV movies.

The fourth season was originally planned as three films split into 12 episodes plus a 13th musical special, but budget and deal changes reduced it to eight episodes, and cut scenes intended for extended DVD versions were removed against the writers' wishes, leading to a rewritten cliffhanger ending for the final episode.

Creator Gavin Blair has publicly refused to reveal how the series' unresolved cliffhanger was meant to be resolved, in case he ever gets the chance to produce a continuation.