This series was originally being developed at CBS by Anthony E. Zuiker in 2010, but it was shut down at the insistence of Tony Gilroy, who was gearing up to direct The Bourne Legacy (2012) and did not want another Bourne project competing with his film.
An early draft of the pilot script had "Pop Goes the Weasel" as the nursery rhyme that triggers Bentley and the other cicadas to awaken. This was later changed to "Frère Jacques" in the final version that aired.
In May 2020, the series was canceled after one season.
The character of Brian J. Smith is connected to other ones from different places and time by the Treadstone program (including Jason Bourne and Aaron Cross from the Bourne franchise). The same happened to his character with other seven ones in Sense8 (2015-2018), although from different reasons.