If there is anyone who should be grateful for this episode it's probably Tom Selleck. Roy Huggins frequently borrowed from Maverick when he later produced the memorable The Rockford Files (1974), which also starred James Garner. In an interview discussing his career, Huggins said that he borrowed the character Waco Williams from this for the creation of the Lance White character used on Rockford, which was played by Selleck. It was the response to his portrayal of Lance that led to Selleck being offered the career defining lead role in the hit show Magnum, P.I. (1980).
Brad Johnson, who plays Karl Bent, Jr., was only seven years younger than R.G. Armstrong, who plays his father.
The figurine Mr. Perkins (Hank Patterson) is carving, while sitting on a porch, appears to be the same one Bret was carving just ten weeks earlier on the porch of his hotel in "A Shady Deal at Sunny Acres".
After taking almost a century for H. J. Heinz to develop a reliable and, due to its glass bottle, visual appealing remedy to pre-regulation meat processing, Bret's request for "The same thing he's having, but without the ketchup," is historically, if not faddishly, correct.
Maverick jokingly asks if Congress had made a decision between Rutherford B. Hayes or Samuel Tilden. This was a reference to the contested election of 1876, where the Presidential election was unsettled due to the question of the votes reported by four States. The dispute dragged on for weeks until the Democrats agreed to support allowing the questioned votes to go to the Republican candidate Hayes, so long as he promised to finally end Reconstruction in the South after 10 years. Tilden, the Democrat's candidate would have had more votes in the Electoral College, but his party was more interested in ending Reconstruction, and the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, then in winning the election. This was the most contentious election in American history, even more so than the elections of the past twenty years.