Most footage comes from an existing Japanese anime series known predominantly as "Gatchaman", but the series content was tweaked for an American audience, including a reduction in violent scenes. To offset the removed content, the character 7-Zark-7 was added and had a role that tied the altered story together.
The series Battle of the Planets was marketed to capitalize on the momentum created by Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), released in the prior year. The words Battle (instead of War) and Planets (instead of Star) are plays on that theme. The character 7-Zark-7 was a play on "droid" names created in Star Wars, that utilized letters and numbers, such as C-3PO and R2-D2.
Tiny Harper is the only member of G-Force whose last name is mentioned on-screen.
The initial design for Zoltar was scrapped in favor of one drawn by uncredited character designer, Yoshitaka Amano. The previous design was used for Commander Gorok in the first two episodes.
Whenever there was an attack in a city, or a densely populated area, the dialogue nearly always mentioned that it had been evacuated in advance. Clearly a bit of psychological tweeking, so the younger viewers could relax knowing it destroyed empty buildings, and not killing hundreds or thousands of people.