The show was based on series creator Dan Harmon's life at Glendale Community College, attempting to reconcile with his girlfriend in Spanish courses. He has also stated the characters are loosely based on the people with whom he hung around, and has nothing to do with his film and television career.
After five seasons, NBC cancelled this show in May 2014. Sony, the show's production owner, was involved in talks with Hulu to renew the show for its sixth season. Talks with Hulu collapsed, however, but Yahoo! purchased a thirteen episode order, and renewed the show in June 2014 for a sixth season. Harmon said in a July 2014 San Diego Comic Con panel: "Community season six, now you're watching the way you used to watch, only now it's legal", jokingly referring to how many in its audience watched the show illegally on their computers. This show aired new episodes exclusively on the online streaming site, Yahoo! Screen, in March 2015.
In a 2018 New Yorker profile of Donald Glover, journalist Tad Friend wrote that while working together on "Community," Chevy Chase racially attacked Donald Glover on- and off-camera. "Chase...often tried to disrupt [Glover's] scenes and made racial cracks between takes. ('People think you're funnier because you're black.') Harmon said, 'Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off. I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night of Chevy's non-P.C. verbiage, and Donald said, "I don't even worry about it."' Glover told me, 'I just saw Chevy as fighting time-a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over. I can't help him if he's thrashing in the water. But I know there's a human in there somewhere-he's almost too human.' (Chase said, 'I am saddened to hear that Donald perceived me in that light.')"