This is Al Pacino's first lead role in a television series; he said he had turned down TV offers for decades because advisors used to tell him 'you don't do television.'

Creator David Weil based the show on bedtime stories his grandmother Sarah, an Auschwitz Birkenau survivor, told him about World War II, and he described writing the character Meyer as feeling like 'meeting my grandfather for the first time.'

Weil, who is Jewish, was partly motivated to create the series by experiencing casual anti-Semitism growing up, such as jokes about 'Jews in ovens' and swastikas sprayed on his high school.

Despite Jordan Peele's attachment as executive producer and an 80-page series bible, most buyers refused to purchase the show, which creator David Weil attributed to its premise of a diverse band of 'others' rising up to reclaim power not being typical for mainstream entertainment; Amazon Studios head Jen Salke eventually bought it.

Logan Lerman said he joined the project because of the involvement of Jordan Peele, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, David Weil and Nikki Toscano, and because of the show's moral dilemma of 'being bad to fight evil.'

Jerrika Hinton prepared for her role as FBI agent Millie Morris by speaking with Jerri Williams, a real Black woman who worked as an FBI agent in the 1970s, calling the conversations 'monumentally helpful.'

Greg Austin, who plays Neo-Nazi character Travis Leich, chose the role to challenge himself and studied psychopathic characters from other TV series as well as serial killer Ted Bundy to prepare.

The bowling scene was Greg Austin's audition scene and also the first sequence he filmed for the series; a continuous shot of his character talking to a congressman before bowling a strike was completed in a single take.

The show uses yellow coloring on the Hunters' costumes and weapons as a deliberate visual choice to reclaim the yellow badge Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust as a symbol of their own power.

In one scene, Jonah and his friends discuss Star Wars (1977) and jokingly debate whether Darth Vader's motivations make him comparable to superheroes like Batman and Superman, reflecting the show's central theme about the morality of vengeance.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum publicly criticized the show's depiction of a fictional 'human chess' game forced upon prisoners as 'dangerous foolishness and caricature,' and expressed concern that the series could embolden future Holocaust deniers.

In response to criticism over historical inaccuracy, creator David Weil stated he deliberately avoided depicting specific real acts of torture experienced by actual Holocaust survivors because he did not want to misrepresent or borrow from any real person's life without permission.