Christopher Pike drew inspiration for The Midnight Club from a true story. In 1993, a young cancer patient asked him to write a story about her and the kids in her ward, who had started a "Midnight Club". "They would meet at midnight and discuss my books," Pike said in a Netflix press release. Pike gave Ilonka Pawluk a Polish name in honor of the young patient, who also had a Polish name. In the series Ilonka is not Polish.
Ruth Codd who played Anya, a wheelchair-using character who had her right leg amputated due to her illness, is also an amputee in real life. At age 23, Codd decided to have her right leg amputated below the knee due to complications from breaking her foot at age 15. She has since used her platform to raise awareness about disabled people, especially amputees.
Ruth Codd's acting debut. Before the show, she worked as a make up artist and barber in Ireland. The show's casting directors found her on TikTok, where she garnered more than 672,000 followers and 20.5 million likes in less than a year for her frank and witty takes on everything from makeup and hair and her youth in Ireland to the COVID lockdown and her disability.
Some of the episodes are named after Christopher Pike's other books: "See You Later" (1990),
"Witch" (1990), "Road To Nowhere" (1993), and "The Eternal Enemy" (1993).