(at around 26:30) Pete Thornton asks Mac if he ever broke a bone. Mac replies, "Well, when I was a kid. Couple of arms, three fingers and a toe, I think." In real life, Richard Dean Anderson broke both his arms, when he was sixteen, in separate hockey accidents. The second break was so bad it took three months of hospitalization for him to recover. It's unverified if the other injuries mentioned by MacGyver actually happened to Anderson when he was a kid.
Most of the Avalanche and Skiing footage used in this episode is recycled stock footage from the feature film Meteor (1979). This required Richard Dean Anderson to be costumed in the all red skiing suit so he would match the skier's appearance in the recycled footage.
While holding Pete hostage, Leland's wife asks him to bring home some milk. After putting down the phone he looks at Pete and his men and says, "The sword of Socrates is hanging over me and she asks for milk!" Socrates was of course a Greek philosopher. The sword Leland is referring to is the sword of Damocles, featured in a 4th century B.C. story of the same name where Damocles, the king of Syracuse, who once had a servant sit underneath a sword suspended over him, held in place by a single strand of human hair.
MacGyver still has the same December calendar on the back of his apt door although it was Febuary when it was filmed.