According to producer Jennifer Celotta, the idea for the cold open where the office workers are watching a logo bounce around a television screen came from a real experience. The writers were in a room watching a DVD logo bounce around the television screen and were arguing about whether it would ever hit the corner.
During the cold open, Michael is holding a conference room meeting about how they could make their quarterly reports more visually appealing to read, with one suggestion being to print them out on "collard" paper. His use of the word "collard" instead of the correct word "colored" actually stems from the end of Diversity Day (2005). At the end of that episode, Michael is sitting around with his employees discussing how their "Diversity Day" festivities could have gone better had they maybe brought in a diverse set of foods, such as spaghetti, burritos, pad thai, and "colored greens". At this point, Stanley corrects Michael and explains that it's pronounced "collard greens", with Michael replying, "That doesn't make any sense. You don't call them collard people. That's offensive." It makes sense that Michael would unintentionally continue to use the wrong word after Stanley corrected him the first time.
A real Scranton pizzeria, Alfredo's Pizza Cafe, was mentioned as a source of superb pizza by the staff; meanwhile, the similarly-named but fictional "Pizza by Alfredo" was also mentioned, as a source of terrible pizza.
Kevin McHale, who plays the pizza delivery kid, later starred in Glee (2009) as Artie Abrams. In the Viewing Party (2010), Michael Scott identifies Artie Abrams as his favorite character in "Glee" and refers to him as "the invalid."
Dwight tells the "kidnapped" pizza boy that, because of some town in Switzerland, he has rights. Dwight implies Geneva Conventions, that extensively define wartime prisoners' basic rights.