The original main theme was a version of the song "Chorus of Janissaries" from the opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
DIC first optioned 'Carmen Sandiego' as a property to adapt in 1991 with their original intent being to do the show as a straight animated cartoon based on the computer game designed by Bay Area-based Broderbund Software. As DIC developed it as a Saturday morning series for the Fox Kids Network, it became a mixture of CGI, classical cel animation, computer graphics, live action, film clips, different styles of cel animation.
The script for every episode had to meet the approval of Broderbund, which created and owned the Carmen Sandiego franchise. Their cause for concern was the level of the violence on other FOX children's shows such as X-Men (1992) and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993). Broderbund did not require this of the creators of the Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1991) and Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (1996) game shows that aired on PBS, presumably since PBS, as the distributor of such shows as Sesame Street (1969), had a long-standing reputation for non-violent educational children's programming.
This animated television series reveals a unique backstory about Carmen Sandiego. According to the show, Carmen Sandiego was an orphan raised at the Golden Gate Girls' School in San Francisco. The Chief gave her a home at the ACME Detective Agency and, by age seventeen, she solved more cases than any other ACME agent. However, she then disappeared and turned to a life of crime.
The head of A.C.M.E. in this series is the Chief, short for Computerized Holographic Imaging Educational Facilitator, his role consisted of providing exposition, information, alerts of Carmen's recent crime, and comic relief. The Chief seems to be loosely inspired by the titular character from Max Headroom (1985).