Rimmer's Gazpacho soup story was based up on a real incident experienced by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor while at Thames Television. Unlike Rimmer, however, they suddenly remembered some soups are served chilled and did not send it back.
In the video of the accident, Rimmer's last words ("Gazpacho Soup"), combined with a shot of a snow globe smashing, are an homage to the "Rosebud" opening of Citizen Kane (1941).
The script was written, as a late addition to the series, following an electrician's strike at the BBC. The previous episode, Confidence and Paranoia (1988), was originally planned as the first series finale. But the strike gave the writers, Rob Grant and _Doug Naylor (I)', a chance to write a different finale to the series. They adapted ideas from an unproduced episode script, "Bodysnatcher", and changed them for this episode.
Although Mac McDonald returned to play Captain Hollister, his scene was filmed at the same time as his appearances in the first episode, The End (1988), to save him the trouble of returning to the set.
The two Rimmer scenes were shot using a split screen process, meaning that Chris Barrie would do a take on one half of the screen and then go over to the other half and do another take. The takes would be spliced together in the editing process.