When Bart and Lisa are in bed at seven o'clock, and Lisa opens the blinds, you can see a previous version of Bart playing baseball outside.
Hank Azaria's voice for Cletus was slightly distorted in this episode because, over the summer between seasons, Azaria and the producers had forgotten what Cletus sounds like.
Matt Groening thought the episode was "fantastic" and he called it one of his favorites. He particularly liked the ending which he thought was "sweet".
In the parenting class, Agnes Skinner said that the state was threatening to take Seymour away because they had another fight over the inflatable bath pillow. They first fought over the bath pillow in The Springfield Connection (1995) from the previous season.
In the original airing, Milhouse mentioned the basket with the infected monkey in it came from Pier One. After Pier One complained about the joke, the reruns changed the line to Trader Pete's. Later syndicated reruns, FXX reruns, as well as the Complete Seventh Season DVD print and the streams from FXX's Simpsons World retain the original line, though the closed captioning/subtitles have the "Trader Pete" line instead of the "Pier One" line. In the UK, the Trader Pete line is used, as there are no Pier One stores over there.