Cartoon:
- Ascended Fanon: A major joke of the series. The majority of Birdman's cases are based around popular fan theories (Doctor Quest and Race Bannon are actually a gay couple, the Mystery Inc. gang are stoners, Top Cat is really a pimp, etc.) and headscratchers (why can't you see Apache Chief's or Grape Ape's genitals, despite their respective sizes?, why is Secret Squirrel apparently naked under his trench coat?, etc.) related to old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
- Billing Displacement: A bit of an odd example: in the parody opening of "The Dabba Don" Barney gets second billing despite only being in two scenes. Given how the ending reveals he's the real mafia boss, it makes a bit more sense. Conversely, despite being the title character and being co-protagonist with Fred, Harvey gets fifth billing. Phil (who only has one scene) and Peanut (who is Harvey's assistant) get higher billing than he does.
- The Other Darrin: For his first few appearances, Peter Potamus was played by the late Joe Alaskey, with Chris Edgerly taking over for the rest of the show.
- Schedule Slip: One of the main downfalls of the series. While the first six episodes aired on schedule, the remaining episodes aired all over the place, with one or two airing then a gap of nearly a year before the next batch aired. Potentially mocked in "Turner Classic Birdman":Robert Osbourne: You may have heard of the animated show Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. In fact, if you're persistent, you can sometimes still catch it late at night on cable.
- That's not without saying the first season didn't have its problems either. Counting the Cartoon Network stealth premiere, the season took almost three years to air and it only had nine episodes.
- Star-Making Role: While Gary Cole was fairly well-known for his live-action career, portraying Harvey was his start in voice acting.
- Trolling Creator: [adult swim] celebrated Election Day 2004 by premiering the episode "Guitar Control", and then proceeded to air the episode 23 times in a row after that. That's right, the same episode of Harvey, for six hours in a row!
- Troubled Production: The second episode, "Very Personal Injury", was apparently a nightmare to finish because the overseas studio couldn't get the comic timing right, resulting in a lot of post-production timing correction. There were also some technical issues that arose. This is why there's such a long list of "special thanks" credits, because they had to pull in a lot of extra help to work on it. It's very possible that this is what precipitated bringing the animation in-house as opposed to sending it overseas after the eighth episode.
- Voices in One Room: Averted. According to Stephen Colbert and Gary Cole themselves on Colbert's talk show, they were never in the same room together when they recorded. The two never met until they briefly crossed paths during the Comedy Festival in 2007, which apparently Colbert forgot about and mistook their meeting at one of the Veep premieres as their first.
Visual Novel:
- The Other Darrin: When Colbert left the show, Capcom was forced to find new voice actors to voice his old characters for the game (Crispin Freeman and Stephen Stanton for Phil Ken Sebben and Myron Reducto, respectively), all of whom are considered by fans to be inferior in quality.
