In Bandersnatch, viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy gamebook into a video game in 1984.

Difficulty in writing the highly non-linear script led to Netflix's creation of a bespoke program called Branch Manager; the unique nature of the content required adaptations in the platform's use of cache memory.

[11] In most cases, when the viewer reaches an ending, the interactive film gives the player the option to redo a last critical choice in order to explore different content, sometimes with a fast-forward through early parts of a storyline already seen.

One ending (chop up the body) concludes in the present day with an adult Pearl, now a programmer for Netflix, attempting to adapt Bandersnatch into an interactive film.

Brooker remarked that he found himself in a similar position as Pearl in trying to work himself through pages of complex decision trees while writing the script.

[16] At Netflix's suggestion, Brooker wrote the 170-page script in Twine, a tool for writing interactive fiction,[5][18] also using Scrivener, Final Draft and multiple versions of Microsoft Notepad.

[a][1] To help viewers who may not be familiar with how adventure games work, the film includes an early, seemingly trivial choice of which breakfast cereal Stefan has.

[27] Writer Warren Ellis was also asked to portray Davies but could not commit to the open shooting schedule and travel that the show required.

[24] The soundtrack was composed by Brian Reitzell, who worked on it by writing separate scores for each of the major storylines, then filling in music for the scenes not already covered.

[19] A segment where the viewer enters the therapist's phone number was initially designed as a more difficult riddle, the codes "999" and "911" leading to alternate scenes of Stefan calling the police in the UK and US, respectively.

[45] Early reports in April 2018, including by Digital Spy and on social media, said that filming for Black Mirror was occurring in Croydon, asserting it was for an episode titled Bandersnatch.

[2] On 19 December 2018, Netflix added the title Black Mirror: Bandersnatch as an upcoming film, with the tagline "Be right back", in reference to the earlier episode of the same name.

[52] In a November 2021 interview with GQ, Poulter stated that he deleted his Twitter account in January 2019 after being harassed by keyboard warriors who mocked his appearance as Ritman.

[53] A week following the film's premiere, Netflix sent out a hint on its social media pages directing users on how to discover an obscure scene.

The site documented some of the fictional games discussed in the film and included a playable version of Nohzdyve that required the use of a ZX Spectrum computer or an emulator.

[15][61][62] The Verge's Jesse Damiani commented that interactivity as in Bandersnatch could potentially be used by Netflix to collect user-preference data and inform marketing choices, such as targeted product placement.

[64][65] A 2019 paper by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras demonstrated how to infer viewers' choices in Bandersnatch through network packet analysis with 96% accuracy.

[71][72] Netflix sought to have the suit summarily dismissed on a number of grounds related to trademark law and fair use allowances, but this was denied by the presiding judge based on evidence brought by Chooseco, the full case scheduled to proceed by February 2020.

[73][74] Netflix continued to seek dismissal, arguing that the "choose your own adventure" term had fallen into a generic trademark, and that the branch of the story where it shows Stefan being controlled by a person watching Netflix makes the work different from past "Choose Your Own Adventure" books which put the reader into the role of the protagonist.

Keith Spencer of Salon made comparisons to early internet-era hypertext fiction and the previous Netflix interactive work Puss in Book, which has a broadly similar plot of a character being driven mad by the knowledge that they are controlled by an external force.

[9] Karl Quinn of The Sydney Morning Herald compared the work to Mosaic, a 2017 murder mystery released by HBO as an interactive app.

[27] Its name was mentioned in an Easter egg in series three episode "Playtest", on the front cover of a magazine which is briefly shown onscreen.

Brooker saw the Easter eggs as "a nice nod to superfans" which should not affect the creative process or force viewers to watch the stories in a particular order.

[56][94] This ending was at one point intended to be a clue to a real life treasure hunt in which people could find Bandersnatch cassettes, inspired by the 1979 picture book Masquerade that gave hints as to the location of a buried bejewelled golden hare.

The website's critical consensus reads, "While Bandersnatch marks an innovative step forward for interactive content, its meta narrative can't quite sustain interest over multiple viewings — though it provides enough trademark Black Mirror tech horror to warrant at least one watch.

[9] The user interface and transitions between choice points were lauded by critics including Heritage and NPR's Linda Holmes, who both called it "seamless", and Griffin, who found the feature "smooth and unobtrusive".

[9] Goslin believed that the interactivity leads to "staccato pacing that prevents anyone involved from finding a real rhythm in each scene", Roisin O'Connor of The Independent concurring that the choices "can become quite wearisome".

[77] Holmes agreed, finding it "deeply frustrating" when she was "simply shown the same segment of story again" until she made the choice "that will actually move you forward".

Goslin called them "paper thin and barely interesting"; Mangan wrote that the medium did not have "energy to spare to make the characters much more than ciphers".

[101] In regard to Stefan's backstory involving his mother's death, Goslin commented that Bandersnatch is "really only interested in this premise as a bridge toward its ultimate destination: becoming meta commentary on itself and video games as a medium".