The series is loosely based on Washington Irving's 1820 short story 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow', with additional concepts borrowed from his story 'Rip Van Winkle'.

For its fourth and final season, the show's setting shifted from a fictionalized Sleepy Hollow, New York, to Washington, D.C.

Behind the scenes, the show experienced a change in leadership: showrunner Mark Goffman left after season two and was replaced by Clifton Campbell for season three, while Albert Kim became co-showrunner for season four.

The pilot episode was filmed in Gastonia, Salisbury, and Charlotte, North Carolina, with the rest of seasons one and two shot in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Seasons three and four moved production to Conyers and Lawrenceville, Georgia, in the metro Atlanta area.

Despite the show being set in Sleepy Hollow, New York, aerial footage of the actual village and the surrounding Tappan Zee region was used for the series.

The series had a crossover with Fox's Bones, starting with the Bones episode 'The Resurrection in the Remains' and concluding in Sleepy Hollow's third-season episode 'Dead Men Tell No Tales'.

The real village of Sleepy Hollow, New York, has a population of about 9,870 according to the 2010 census, but the show depicted it as having roughly 144,000 residents, a fictional exaggeration frequently noted by the local newspaper.

The series premiere drew 10 million viewers, marking Fox's highest-rated fall drama premiere since 2006's Standoff and roughly double the audience of the network's previous year timeslot occupant, The Mob Doctor.

Two official tie-in books were released in September 2014: 'The Secret Journal of Ichabod Crane' by Alex Irvine, presented as Crane's in-universe journal of season one, and the novel 'Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution' by Keith R. A. DeCandido, set between episodes ten and eleven of the series.