While the Simpsons are at the movie theater, a THX trailer is shown and the Deep Note literally blows the audience out of their seats, shattering an exit sign, eyeglasses, teeth, and someone's head even explodes. The THX executives liked that parody so much that the scene was made into an actual THX theatrical trailer.
Homer's quote, "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try," was added to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations in August 2007.
The actor Burns hires to play Homer is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, doing an impression of Michael Caine. The producers wanted Caine to actually voice himself playing Homer Simpson, but Caine turned it down.
A deleted scene from the episode sees Mr. Burns release a "Robotic Richard Simmons" as a way of getting rid of Homer, which dances to a recording of KC & The Sunshine Band's "Shake Your Booty". Simmons was originally asked to guest star, according to David Mirkin, he was "dying to do the show", but declined when he found out he would voice a robot. It was fully animated, but was cut because it often did not get a good reaction during table reads. According to Bill Oakley, there was a "significant division of opinion amongst the staff as to whether Richard Simmons was a target The Simpsons should make fun of" because it was "well-trod territory". They also felt it distracted viewers from the story. To the production staff's surprise, the scene would make the audience "erupt with laughter" when screened at animation conventions and college presentations, so they decided to insert it in the season seven clip show The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular! (1995).
This was the first episode in which Jace Richdale received a writers' credit, although he was a part of the show's staff for several seasons. When he was starting out as a writer on the show, Richdale was told to come up with some story ideas and he came up with the basic plot off the top of his head.