This episode is takes its basic plot from the story of the same name in "The Amazing Spider-Man #13".
Mysterio's first appearance out of costume here is quite unusual. For some reason, the animators chose to make him look like Mr. Spock from the TV series Star Trek. He has pointed ears, a banged haircut, and arched eyebrows. This was probably done on purpose, since Star Trek was in its original run at the same time as this season of Spiderman.
The story's climactic fight sequence includes a shift in scenery that would prove oddly prescient. Namely, the story has an extended sequence in a movie set where a scene from a western movie is being shot, before Spider-Man and Mysterio's fight spills onto it and dominating the action. In the 1960s, the Western genre reigned as a dominant one in mainstream film, only to fade in succeeding decades into a niche category and eventually replaced by the superhero film as a major genre, which has been described as a fantasy reimagining of the Western in many respects.