In a conversation with Game Rant, Common Side Effects co-creators Steve Hely and Joseph Bennett revealed that they came up with the idea for the show before COVID hit, and were worried at times that the pandemic would make their story "irrelevant now." But ultimately, Common Side Effects is the perfect story for a post-COVID world, viewed by an audience now much more accustomed to considering big questions about health and sickness and what they themselves would do to obtain a cure for what ailed them.