Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad originally appeared as corporate mascots for a fictional fast-food chain called 'Burger Trench' in a planned Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode titled 'Baffler Meal', though the trio differed in appearance, personality, and voice from their final designs.

The 'Baffler Meal' Space Ghost episode was rewritten multiple times and wasn't actually produced until after Aqua Teen Hunger Force became popular; instead it was reworked into an episode called 'Kentucky Nightmare' while the trio debuted separately in the ATHF pilot 'Rabbot'.

The crime-fighting premise of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force team was added early on simply to appease Cartoon Network executives who did not want a show about food items 'just going around and doing random things', and was later abandoned.

Although fully scripted, much of the show's dialogue was supplemented with ad-libs and improvisation by the voice cast, and the animation was created afterward to match this improvised material.

Voice actor George Lowe, who played Space Ghost, made numerous cameo appearances throughout the series and was even considered part of the main cast during the 2011 season titled Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1, where he announced each episode's title.

A planned spin-off pilot called Spacecataz, created by Willis and Maiellaro, was used as cold openings for season three; Adult Swim declined to order more episodes since all characters had been destroyed at the end of the pilot.

In 2007, a guerrilla marketing campaign placing LED Mooninite displays in eleven US cities caused a bomb scare in Boston, leading to road and waterway closures; Turner Broadcasting paid $2 million in settlements and the Cartoon Network general manager resigned over the incident.

The season five episode 'Boston', created as the show's response to the 2007 bomb scare, was pulled by Adult Swim before airing and has never been officially released, though an unfinished version leaked online in 2015.

The 2007 film introduced a fourth Aqua Teen member, a chicken nugget named Chicken Bittle, voiced by Bruce Campbell.

Rapper Schoolly D performed the original theme song for the first seven seasons, and each subsequent alternately-titled season (8 through 11) featured a completely different theme song by a different artist, including Joshua Homme and Alain Johannes for season eight and Flying Lotus for season ten.

Adult Swim once sold a full-scale, functioning hot air balloon shaped like Meatwad for $70,000, which included a piloted one-hour ride, making it the most expensive item ever offered on the Adult Swim Shop.