Title "What's Eating Robert" is a spoof of the popular movie "What's Eating Gilbert Grape". Struggling to come up with a suitable title, director Chris Mallery and editor Marion Sistena were goofing off in English class bouncing movie title spoofs off one another. Finally Chris came up with "What's Eating Robert". Another possible spoofed suggestion was "There's Something About Robert"(There's Something About Mary) which was thought of by Marion.