An episode of Futurama (1999) featured the PJs on sewer manhole cover. In response, the Futurama character of Fry appears as a missing person on the side of a milk carton in the PJs.
The first stop motion animated series made for prime-time TV.
In 2002, Chicago janitor Tally Collier sued Eddie Murphy and other producers of the show for 75, 000$ in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages. Tally alleged that they stole his likeness from an amateur documentary that had been made about his life in the Chicago housing projects of Robert Taylor Homes which had been filmed by Daryl Murphy (not related to Eddie Murphy) and submitted to the Oprah Winfrey show in 1998. Collier claimed that the tape had been passed around Hollywood people and that they used his likeness for the character Sanchez who speaks with an electronic voice box & walks with a cane like him. He also claimed that they had used the likeness of other individuals from the documentary for the characters of Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Mambo Garcelle, Smokey, and Juicy. The suit was dismissed in 2003. The director of the documentary Daryl Murphy later on filed a lawsuit himself in 2004 claiming that the film he'd made had been appropriated by Winfrey's Harpo Productions and eventually sent along to Eddie Murphy. In 2005, a year after filing the suit, Daryl who was angry with the progress of the lawsuit, climbed a construction 180-foot-tall crane on the site of the Trump Tower Chicago, threatening to jump, he was talked out of it and was charged criminal trespassing, reckless conduct, and disorderly conduct. In 2007, Daryl's lawsuit was also dismissed and he then climbed a 26-storey scaffold on a building near Chicago's Loop. The legal dispute then lasted for many years and Daryl later passed away in early 2020.
The PJs was the first animated series produced by Touchstone Television, marking as Disney's first original adult animated series.
Although the PJs is modeled after the Brewster-Douglas public housing projects in Detroit, Michigan, the show takes place in the inner cities of Chicago, Illinois. This is revealed in "Smokey the Squatter".