The original idea came to Mattie Rosen when they were Andrew Birchenough's roommate in college. The two of them were both fans of the movie review website Spill.com and noticed the similarity in appearance to the character Cyrus (voiced by Chris Cox). Rosen joked that he looked like he could be his long-lost father. This idea stayed dormant until the Spill-Dot-Con Film Festival in 2010, when it was revived as a short, absurd science fiction comedy. to make a short film contest based on any Spill.com character. If it weren't for the festival, it's possible the film would not have been made, at least in this context.
Shot in one day, but took two weeks to edit due to color grading, sound editing and the pace of creating two different edits: the "director's cut" preferred by Jack Gattanella and a shorter cut for the Spill-dot-Con Festival.
It was Fred Henry III's idea to shave his head between scenes. 'Jack Gattanella' thought it was a fine little in-joke on the shooting of Fahrenheit 451 (1966) when 'Oscar Werner' did a similar unlikely hair cutting measure to mess with continuity. In this case, it was intentional for the sake of the unconventional plot and was agreed upon by actor and director.
The bulk of the budget was spent on renting equipment and creating a poster-sized, laminated print-out of "Cyrus the Great" for the climax.
Originally Jack Gattanella wanted to end the film with The Temptations song "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" over the end credits, but Mattie Rosen persuaded him to keep in a temp track of a harmonica blues tune variation, based off of the end of Stroszek (1977).