The Angry Beavers originated as one of three show ideas Mitch Schauer pitched to Nickelodeon while he was working as a producer on Warner Bros.' Freakazoid! in 1995; Schauer wasn't even present at the pitch meeting, as his ideas were presented by the production company on his behalf.

The initial concept centered on two bad-tempered, politically incorrect beavers who hated fads and popular media trends; creator Mitch Schauer deliberately avoided making the characters 'cute' as a reaction against the soft, safe character designs common at the time, citing The Pink Panther, The Flintstones, and Rocky and Bullwinkle as influences.

Gunther-Wahl Productions held auditions with over 300 different actors before Mitch Schauer settled on Richard Steven Horvitz and Nick Bakay to voice Daggett and Norbert, largely because of the natural chemistry the two displayed upon meeting.

Schauer, inspired by director Howard Hawks, encouraged Horvitz and Bakay to go off-script and improvise overlapping dialogue during recording sessions, considering their ad-libs some of the show's best moments.

Mitch Schauer once gave Nickelodeon producer Mary Harrington a signed log supposedly bitten by a real beaver, but he admitted in 2017 that he had actually bitten it himself.

Nickelodeon censored the phrase 'shut up' in the 1998 segment 'Alley Oops,' with writer Micah Wright attributing the decision to then-president Herb Scannell, who reportedly believed avoiding the phrase on air would stop children from saying it in real life.

The segment 'The Legend of Kid Friendly,' featuring a cyborg cowboy named Kid Friendly, was created by Schauer as a tongue-in-cheek response to the network's repeated notes demanding the show be made 'kid-friendly.'

The planned finale segment 'Bye Bye Beavers,' in which the characters learn via mail that their show was cancelled and openly criticize Nickelodeon, was approved in premise but later halted by the network for violating its policy against referencing a show ending; it survives only as leaked storyboards and audio released by Richard Steven Horvitz in 2006.