The real Northeast blackout on November 9, 1965 was caused by the tripping of a 230-kilo volt transmission line near Ontario, Canada, at 5:16 p.m., which caused several other heavily loaded lines also to fail precipitating a surge of power that overwhelmed the transmission lines in western New York, causing a "cascading" tripping of additional lines. All together, 30 million people in eight U.S. states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec were affected by the blackout. By the next morning power had been restored throughout the Northeast.
Frankie's brothers' names, Primo and Segundo, translate to "First" and "Second".
The episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Hairstyling for a Series.
In 1988, Dean Stockwell starred in Married to the Mob (1988), a movie about the Mafia in which he played a Don-like character named Tony having an affair with a woman who cheats on him with a hit-man named Frank and Frank's widow whom Tony pursues eventually becomes a hairdresser. This episode has Sam (Scott Bakula) leaping into a situation with a Don-like character having an affair with a hairdresser who is cheating on him with a hit-man named Frankie, the son of Tony.
An early episode in which Al refers to Ziggy as a "he". However, in later episodes Ziggy is referred to as "she" and we hear her female voice in Season 4 "The Leap Back" (1991).