Michael Landon said in a 1985 People interview that he promised God he would create something to help people when his daughter was in a coma.

Landon said he got the idea for the show while driving through Beverly Hills on a Friday night and being struck by how angry drivers honked at each other, wondering why people couldn't just be nicer to one another.

NBC executives were initially skeptical of the pitch, fearing critics would attack it, but Landon was so persistent that he vowed to produce a second pilot for free if the first one tested poorly with audiences.

Landon personally chose Victor French to play Mark Gordon because he had grown familiar with French's acting style while working together on Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza.

Quadriplegic actor James Troesh, who had a small role as attorney Scotty Wilson in a season-one episode, later convinced Landon to create an episode where his character has a romance loosely based on Troesh's real-life relationship with his wife.

The final scene of the feature-length pilot was filmed along Dawn Road south of Tucson, Arizona, and was spliced with separately filmed footage from Soledad Canyon Road near Acton, California, to create the show's title sequence.

Although his crew scouted filming locations in advance, Michael Landon himself never visited them before the shoot, preferring to keep things spontaneous and trusting his crew's choices.

Mark Gordon's car, central to the duo's travels throughout the series, was a 1977 Ford LTD II.

Victor French, who co-starred as Mark Gordon, died of lung cancer two months before the final episode aired, having been diagnosed shortly after completing filming for the fifth season; this was his final screen appearance.

The show's melancholy theme song was composed by David Rose.