iCarly began as a different pitch called Starstruck, in which Miranda Cosgrove would play a normal girl who gets cast in her favorite TV show; Dan Schneider scrapped this script in November 2006 to develop iCarly instead.

The show's title came about because the pilot's lead girl was originally named Sam, but the URL for iSam was taken; after trying other names like iJosie, creator Dan Schneider settled on iCarly and renamed the lead character Carly.

The pilot was filmed in January 2007 at the Nickelodeon on Sunset studio (now Earl Carroll Theatre), and the exterior of the Shays' apartment building, Bushwell Plaza, is a digitally altered image of the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles.

Production scheduling was complicated by the cast's touring commitments: Miranda Cosgrove's Dancing Crazy tour and Jennette McCurdy's Generation Love mall tour delayed filming, so the whole cast didn't reunite until the 2011 Kids' Choice Awards.

Some shots for the final season were filmed at KTLA Studios (now Old Warner Brothers Studios), and the season was split into two broadcast parts with a four-month hiatus after the first six episodes.

Jennette McCurdy declined to reprise her role as Sam in the 2021 revival, stating she had left acting and felt embarrassed by her past career.

The January 2010 episode 'iSaved Your Life' drew 11.2 million viewers, making it the second most-watched telecast in Nickelodeon history, while the June 2012 season premiere had the lowest viewership of any iCarly premiere at just 2.4 million viewers.

In her 2022 memoir 'I'm Glad My Mom Died,' Jennette McCurdy described an unsafe work environment on iCarly, alleging emotional abuse and nonconsensual massages by an unnamed 'Creator,' later identified by media outlets as Dan Schneider; she also claimed she turned down 'hush money' from Nickelodeon to stay silent.

A proposed spin-off pilot called Gibby, centered on Noah Munck's character mentoring kids at a recreation center, was filmed in 2012 but never picked up or aired; its script was released in 2021 and the full pilot leaked in 2023.

The show parodies real tech products with an 'Pear' brand instead of Apple, including a pear-shaped 'Pear Phone.'