The plots of the episodes are influenced by the writers' and Quintel's personal experiences, such as performing prank telephone calls or accepting an eating challenge from a restaurant. The show often references 1980s culture, using music and electronic devices from that era because many factors from the decade left a positive influence on Quintel. The show also makes references to modern social trends such as viral internet videos.

Regular Show largely grew out of creator J. G. Quintel's life and experiences in college. Quintel attended the California Institute of the Arts, and many of the characters on Regular Show are based on the characters developed for his student films The Naïve Man from Lolliland (2005) and 2 in the AM PM (2006). Both originated as part of a game called "48-hour films", in which students put words into a hat, pulled out one word at midnight and spent a weekend developing ideas for a film. Quintel attended college with Thurop Van Orman and Pendleton Ward, who both went on to work at Cartoon Network Studios with Quintel; Van Orman created The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Ward created Adventure Time. Quintel concurrently worked on Camp Lazlo and as creative Director on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack while completing his degree. He was later invited to pitch for Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute, a project to showcase short films created without the interference of network executives and focus testing,

Most episodes of Regular Show last 11 minutes; episodes are usually paired together to fill a half-hour program slot. 261 episodes in eight seasons have been completed and broadcast. The first season began on September 6, 2010, with the episode "The Power" and ended on November 22, 2010, with "Mordecai and the Rigbys". The second season began on November 29, 2010, with "Ello Gov'nor" and ended on August 1, 2011, with "Karaoke Video". The third season premiered on September 19, 2011, with the episode "Stick Hockey" and concluded on September 3, 2012, with "Bad Kiss". The fourth season premiered on October 1, 2012, with the half-hour special "Exit 9B" and concluded on August 12, 2013 with "Steak Me Amadeus". The fifth season premiered on September 2, 2013, with the episodes "Laundry Woes" and "Silver Dude" and concluded on August 14, 2014, with "Real Date". The sixth season premiered on October 9, 2014, with "Maxin' and Relaxin'", and ended on June 25, 2015 with "Dumped at the Altar". The seventh season premiered with "Dumptown U.S.A." on June 26, 2015 and ended with the half-hour "Rigby's Graduation Day Special" on June 30, 2016. The eighth and final season, titled Regular Show in Space, started on September 26, 2016 with "One Space Day at a Time" and ended on January 16, 2017 with "A Regular Epic Final Battle".

The show has an app called Nightmare-athon available on the iOS App Store. A new app has been released called "Ride 'Em Rigby". On April 8, 2013, J. G. Quintel announced on his Twitter page that an official Regular Show video game was in development at the time, which is titled Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby In 8-Bit Land. It was developed by WayForward Technologies and published by D3 Publisher for Nintendo 3DS. The video game was released on October 29, 2013.

After accidentally creating a "Timenado," slacker groundskeepers Mordecai and Rigby go back in time and battle an evil volleyball coach in order to save the universe — and their friendship.

It first screened at the Downtown Independent in LA on August 14, 2015. It was released to digital download on September 1, 2015, it was also released to DVD by Warner Home Video on October 13, 2015, and had its television premiere on November 2015. The movie also screened at select Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas across the United States and it had a select showtime at the SVA Theatre of New York and at the Cinema Montrereal Canada during October 2015.

After eight seasons and 261 episodes, the series concluded on January 16, 2017 with the one-hour finale "A Regular Epic Final Battle".