Gus does not appear in this episode. He makes his first appearance in "The New Kid", making this episode and "The Great Jungle Gym Standoff" the only episodes where Gus does not make an appearance.
On the official One Saturday Morning Recess website, an audio clip of T.J. saying "Cover me, I'm going in" was included on T.J.'s character page, and video clips of Vince saying that a kid needs finesse to speak to someone of King Bob's stature, Spinelli telling King Bob that technically everyone is "Some dumb kid", and Gretchen trying to distract the Kindergartners were put on the character pages for Vince, Spinelli, and Gretchen respectively.
This episode was adapted into chapter book form for the book One Saturday Morning: Without Friends, You're Nothing in 1999, along with stories based on Disney's Doug and Pepper Ann.
When the kids are working together to break T.J. out of the cafeteria, the theme song to the series is played.
The first episode was originally going to premiere as a sneak peek in prime time on August 31, 1997, but due to Princess Diana's death who had a car accident the same day, the premiere date of the first episode was moved to the following week so ABC could air news coverage of Princess Diana's funeral. To fill in the entry, the first episode was reran on September 20 as part of Disney's One Saturday Morning block after the news coverage of Princess Diana's funeral sneak peek so ABC premiered Pepper Ann (1997) instead.