Cooper's dream is mostly made up of deleted scenes from Northwest Passage (1989) in its alternate international edit.
This episode was watched by an audience of 19.2 million households in the United States, equating to roughly 21 percent of the available audience.
The episode's ending was parodied in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", a 1995 two-part episode of The Simpsons, in which Dale Cooper and The Man from Another Place were replaced by the characters of Chief Wiggum and Lisa Simpson, respectively. The backwards speech and unexplained shadow moving across a wall were included in the parody, which takes place in a detailed recreation of the Black Lodge.
The opening shot of the Horne family silently eating dinner lasts for a full 60 seconds.
Frank Byers, the episode's director of photography, has stated that the chief inspiration for his choice to use wide-angle lenses and soft lighting throughout the episode was the 1958 Orson Welles film Touch of Evil.