Five seasons were planned. By the fifth season, Orel would have evolved from being naive and innocent to an emotionally mature person. According to creator Dino Stamatopoulos, the fifth season would have focused more on other townspeople and the title would have been changed to "Moralton".
According to Scott Adsit, Adult Swim executive Mike Lazzo cancelled the show because he felt it was getting "depressing".
Any chance of Dino extending the show beyond its unintended three seasons were destroyed when Adult Swim executives saw an early draft of the episode "Alone", which is the most dark and disturbing episode of the series, upon which the show was promptly cancelled and the season was cut in half from 20 episodes to 13. This is ironic considering the fact that the executives actually wanted the show to get darker after the two part Season Two finale, "Nature".
Dino Stamatopoulis (the creator) has claimed that Clay Puppington was based off of what he imagined that he'd be like if he hadn't gotten a divorce.
The show evolved from a script Stamatopoulos wrote for Iggy Pop. After the meeting with the notorious Pop did not go well, the script became the episode "Waste".