This is the first episode to have a character not from the original four to slide through the portal.
The plot for this episode is based on the "Essay on the Principle of Population" published by Reverend Thomas Malthus, a 19th Century English economist. He warned that mankind would be forever condemned to live in misery because the population would always increase at a faster rate than the food supply. While this essay was mostly ignored at the time, this world took it to its logical extreme.
On Paradise World, Joycelyn Elders is the President of the United States in 1995. In real life, she served as the US Surgeon General from 1993 to 1994 and is a proponent of safe sex.
Prof. Arturo's assertion that the English invented fishing is not true. Analysis of the remains of a 40,000-year-old modern human from eastern Asia showed that he regularly consumed freshwater fish.