Trivia

When no one in the neighborhood wants to talk about having heard a rape being committed, Logan tells Sgt. Greevey that "we're living in the post-Kitty Genovese era." On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York City. A New York Times article about the murder claimed that when the police later combed the neighborhood, it was alleged that 38 people admitted to hearing her cries for help but didn't help the girl or call the police. This behavior has become known as the "bystander effect" or "Genovese syndrome." The "38 witnesses" claim was later proven to be false: further investigation many years later turned up calls from at least a dozen neighbors. It was concluded that a New York Times reporter had exaggerated some details and falsely reported others. In 2015, the Times apologized for the false story.

Although the bystander effect is a real phenomenon, there have been a number of documented cases of it. One such incident occurred on October 24, 2009 outside of a high school in Richmond, California where a teenage girl was beaten and gang raped by a group of boys in a school courtyard during a homecoming dance, over the course of two and a half hours the boys took turns beating, raping and burning the girl with cigarettes. During this time as many as 20 people witnessed the incident but did nothing to intervene or call for help, several people even recorded the rape on their phones and cheered on the attackers. Seven men were charged in relation to the attack, four for raping the girl and three of the people in the crowd who were videotaping and cheering the attack were charged with criminal facilitation of rape for encouraging the attack, it was the first known instance of a bystander to an attack being charged. The four rapists were sentenced to sentences ranging from 27 years to life, the bystanders who cheered them on were sentenced to 3-6 years each; the bystanders appealed their convictions arguing that watching a crime isn't a criminal act, the Court of Appeals upheld the original convictions stating their actions made them more than bystanders, by cheering the attackers on they encouraged them to injure the girl even more severely, and encouraging a criminal act is a crime. Another well known incident was on October 13, 2021 on a train in Philadelphia, over the course of 40 minutes a woman was sexually harassed & assaulted by a man, she loudly told him to leave her alone several times before the man pined her to the floor and raped her. Surveillance cameras from the train showed that a number of passengers witnessed the harassment and rape but did nothing to help the woman or call 911, a few people even filmed the rape. Finally after being raped for almost 10 minutes an off duty employee boarded the train and called 911 and pulled the rapist off her.

This episode appears to be based on two separate cases/incidents:

• The 1989 Trisha Meili (a.k.a. "The Central Park jogger") case. On April 19, 1989, Meili, a female jogger, was violently assaulted, raped, and sodomized in Central Park. It was thought to be related to attacks by a large group of teenagers on eight other people in the park that night, two of which left the victims unconscious. Meili was beaten so badly that she was in a coma for 12 days. Five of the teens were arrested and became known as the Central Park Five. They were found guilty and each received sentences ranging from five to 15 years for the crime. However, in 2001, Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist serving life in prison, confessed to officials that he had raped Meili and his DNA matched that found at the scene. In addition to providing other confirmatory evidence, Reyes said he raped Meili alone. However, Reyes could not be prosecuted for the rape because the statute of limitations had passed. Meanwhile, the Central Park Five were released, and in 2003, they sued the City of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress. The city eventually settled in 2014 with the five plaintiffs for $41 million. The five men also filed a lawsuit against the State of New York for additional damages; this case was settled in 2016 for a total of $3.9 million.
• The 1967 Maggie de la Riva rape case. Riva was a Filipina actress who was abducted in front of her home in New Manila, Quezon City on June 26, 1967, by four men, all of whom were sons of influential families, and taken to a motor hotel where she was abused and raped. Her rape case became one of the most publicized cases in Philippine history.

At the time of the filming of this episode, Samuel L. Jackson was a relatively unknown actor. In the years following he would become a major Hollywood star, with nominations for several awards. Jackson's been nominated for an Academy Award, and a number of Golden Globes.

This is Philip Seymour Hoffman's first acting credit in TV or film. In the credits rolled at the end of the show, he is listed as "Philip Hoffman" playing the character "Hanauer." Interestingly, another actor named Philip Hoffman appears in this episode and is listed in the end credits. His full name is Philip Hoffman, but he is listed in the final credits as "Phil Hoffman" playing the role of the "Hypnotherapist". And in a sad irony Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, Hanauer, is a drug user and dealer; not long after his acting career started Hoffman began using drugs and became addicted to opioids and abused both prescription painkillers like oxycodone as well as heroin. On February 2, 2014 he was found dead in an apartment in Greenwich village, New York with a syringe still in his arm and several bags of the dangerous variety of heroin called China White in the room, which is diacetylmorphine (heroin) cut with the highly potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. Toxicology reports showed Hoffman had several times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system in addition to heroin.

First appearance in an American TV series or movie of Canadian actor Gil Bellows, known later for his role in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and other films.