His son, Rusty, is desperate for his approval; his mother and grandmother, known in the show as Granny, is often the center of his aggression; and Lily, Early's sister, is mostly unconscious in a pool of her own vomit.

Squidbillies follows the exploits of the Cuyler family and their interactions with the local populace, which usually results in a fair amount of destruction, mutilation, and death.

At the epicentre of this rural paradise is Dougal County, home to crippling gambling addictions, a murderous corporation, sexual deviants, and the authentic Southern mountain squid.

[2] The show often satirizes the history and culture of the American South, including the Lost Cause, slavery, religious fundamentalism, segregation, political conservatism, bigotry, racism and poverty.

In the words of The New York Times, the show takes "backwoods stereotypes" and turns them into "a cudgel with which to pound maniacally on all manner of topical subjects.

The series has its origins in 2003 when Mike Lazzo, former vice president of Adult Swim, asked to develop a project around the title Squidbilly's, which he speculated about during a conversation with his colleagues about Hanna-Barbera's Squiddly Diddly character.

Later, Lazzo approved and commissioned a screenplay by Dave Willis and Jim Fortier, who decided to base the plot and related characters on the stories of the two creators who both grew up in Conyers, Georgia.

According to vice president Keith Crofford development of the first season was delayed due to a lack of ideas, revealing that the pilot episode was scheduled to air in December 2004.

The series is written primarily and entirely by Jim Fortier and Dave Willis, who are sometimes aided by other writers such as Casper Kelly and Will Shepard, who send their scripts to the creators.

The main software adopted for the series's animation is Macromedia Shockwave Flash, which allowed in later seasons to more easily change the resolution format to render the broadcast in high definition.

Together with Fortier and Willis, Prisk worked about a year and a half to develop the animation style of the backgrounds, trying to adapt them to the previously designed characters according to line widths, layers and texture complexity.

On August 16, 2020, Stuart Baker was fired from the series for controversial comments towards the Black Lives Matter movement and country singer Dolly Parton.