Carnival Phantasm was produced to celebrate the tenth anniversary of TYPE-MOON and was billed as the 'TYPE-MOON 10th Anniversary Animation'.

The anime is based on Eri Takenashi's gag manga anthology Take-Moon, which parodied TYPE-MOON works like Tsukihime, Melty Blood and Fate/stay night; its adaptation into anime was announced in the January 2011 issue of Monthly Comic Rex.

Episode 4 featured a route selection for the story, and an actual public poll was held on the official website from August 19 to September 15, 2011, letting fans vote on which path ('Date with everyone') would be produced; it was later included in the third volume as 'The Sorcerer's Box'.

The alternate route that lost the fan poll, 'Date with the main heroine,' was not scrapped entirely but was later included in the separate 'Special Season' released in 2013.

In the character design materials, Takahiro Sakurai is credited as the voice of Arihiko Inui, but the character never actually appears in the show; Sakurai does appear in the OVA itself as Saber in the Fate/Prototype special.

The recurring mini-corner 'Holy Grail-kun' is a parody of the manga/anime Doraemon, featuring a mysterious entity offering strange tools to characters.

The character Holy Grail-kun originated from an April Fools' joke article titled 'fuyuki.com' from 2010, where it was presented as a local mascot character for Fuyuki City invented by Caster.

The opening theme 'Super☆Affection' is performed by six voice actresses (Minami Kuribayashi, Miyuki Hashimoto, Faylan, Aki Misato, Yozuca*, and Rino) and features an on-screen dance scene with nearly all the show's characters; the Special Season version adds Chizuru Katsuragi and Hibiki Hibino to the dance.

The third season included the 12-minute special anime Fate/Prototype as a bonus feature, packaged together with the Prototype/material artbook.

A 'Complete Edition' compiling all 12 TV episodes plus the EX Season, Special Season, and Fate/Prototype bonus content was released on April 30, 2015, as a two-disc Blu-ray set.