Shoji Kawamori first conceived the series after a trip to Nepal, where the foggy mountain region inspired him to imagine a hidden world for an epic about fate and destiny.

Kawamori pitched the concept simply as: 'if Macross was robotic mecha and love songs, why not a story about robotic mecha and divining powers?'

The original 1990 pitch for the series was for 39 episodes with a radically different concept and tone; production truly began in 1994 when the show solidified into its final fantasy-focused 26-episode format.

Folken and Dilandau were initially conceived as a single enemy commander, but the creators decided to split the character into two with very different personalities to make the story more interesting.

Yasuhiro Imagawa, who is credited with coining the word 'Escaflowne' as a Latin-based derivative of 'escalation,' was originally set to direct the series but left before production started to direct Mobile Fighter G Gundam instead.

Director Kazuki Akane completely redesigned protagonist Hitomi, changing her from a curvy, air-headed, long-haired character with glasses into a slim, athletic, short-haired and more intelligent, confident girl, and added more girl-oriented elements including the tarot card plot device.

Maaya Sakamoto was only 16 years old and fresh from a small role in Mizuiro Jidai when she was cast as the voice of Hitomi; this was her first regular TV anime role and first lead, and she also performed the opening theme song.

Composer Yoko Kanno considered Maaya Sakamoto an ideal interpreter of her music, and their collaboration on this series is considered by some fans to be the launching point of Sakamoto's singing career.

When Fox Kids aired a dubbed version in the US starting August 2000, episodes were heavily edited to remove footage, add new flashback sequences, downplay Hitomi's role, skip the first episode entirely, and replace much of Yoko Kanno's soundtrack with techno rearrangements by Inon Zur; the broadcast was cancelled after only ten episodes due to low ratings.

The 2000 theatrical film 'Escaflowne' was Sunrise's first officially co-produced and co-financed anime film with a Korean company, greenlit after the TV series achieved high ratings in South Korea and Korean partners offered to fund a movie adaptation.

The villain Dornkirk's real name is Isaac, and the character is explicitly modeled on the real historical scientist and alchemist Isaac Newton, discoverer of universal gravitation.

Two very different manga retellings were developed alongside the anime during its production hiatus; because the anime's story changed radically before airing, artist Katsu Aki's Shōnen Ace manga ended up depicting an earlier, more violent and mecha-focused version of Hitomi's design that had originally been planned for the anime.