Creator Sol Saks drew inspiration from the 1942 film I Married a Witch, based on Thorne Smith's unfinished novel The Passionate Witch, and from the 1958 film Bell, Book and Candle, both of which were properties of Columbia Pictures, which also owned Bewitched's production company Screen Gems.

Rehearsals for the pilot began on November 22, 1963, the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which director William Asher felt personally affected by since he had produced the 1962 televised birthday event where Marilyn Monroe sang to Kennedy.

Academy Award-winning actor José Ferrer narrated the pilot episode without receiving screen credit; Elizabeth Montgomery later revealed her father Robert Montgomery had originally been asked to narrate but turned the job down.

Dick York left the series in 1969 after collapsing on set while filming 'Daddy Does His Thing,' a result of chronic back problems stemming from an accident during the filming of They Came to Cordura (1959); he was replaced by Dick Sargent for the final three seasons.

After Alice Pearce, who played Gladys Kravitz, died in 1966, comedienne Alice Ghostley was offered the role but turned it down out of respect for her friend Pearce; Sandra Gould was hired instead, and Ghostley later joined the show as the witch Esmeralda.

In June 1970, the cast and crew traveled to Salem, Magnolia, and Gloucester, Massachusetts to film an eight-episode 'Salem Saga' story arc, the only time the show was filmed away from its Hollywood studio sets and backlot.

The exterior of the Stephens house was created by reversing and replicating the blueprint of a real Santa Monica house used in the 1959 film Gidget, attached to an existing garage on the Columbia Ranch backlot; the same house set was later reused in I Dream of Jeannie, Hook, Line & Sinker, and other productions.

Marvel's 2021 limited series WandaVision pays homage to Bewitched in several episodes, using the same house exterior (as Agatha Harkness's home) and briefly showing the interior set, while its second episode features an animated title sequence styled after the original show.

Bewitched inspired the rival NBC sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, produced by the same studio, Screen Gems, and it also heavily influenced the Japanese manga and anime Sally the Witch, which helped launch the entire Magical Girl genre.

The 2005 feature film starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell was not a remake but a metafictional story about an actor cast to play Darrin in a Bewitched reboot; it was poorly reviewed, with The New York Times calling it 'an unmitigated disaster,' and it lost money domestically despite earning $68 million internationally.