Michael Mann told Jay Leno on Jay Leno's Garage (2015) that Enzo Ferrari had watched the series and was dismayed that it featured a fake Ferrari Daytona. (It was widely known, thanks to press reports at the time, that it was a Corvette with a fiberglass replica Daytona body.) Ferrari asked Mann what he could do to replace the fake car. Mann replied, "You could send us a couple of Testarossas. I'll even blow up the Daytona." Enzo Ferrari sent the Testarossas, and in this episode, the Daytona was blown up.
Originally, the season three opener was planned to be a two-hour episode set in Ireland, but this idea was scrapped when Don Johnson was unavailable due to a recording commitment for his album 'Heartbeat'. With the scrapping of the planned Ireland premiere, El Viejo (1986) was subsequently intended to be the season opener, but was held back due to Johnson's holdout and studio executives at NBC thinking the destruction of Crockett's car would make a better start to the season.
The fancy cars driven by Crockett and Tubbs are vehicles that had been confiscated from convicted criminals pursuant to the Florida state law mandating the forfeiture of property used in or paid for by the commission of a crime. In Sons and Lovers (1986), a criminal is seen to be driving a black Testarossa. During surveillance Switek refers to the car as a Testarossa. In this episode Crockett refers to his new ride - a Testarossa - as having "fresh paint and fresh rubber," which identifies this as being the same car, now confiscated and repainted.
The dogs Izzy is walking are named Gus and Captain Call from the 1985 book Lonesome Dove, a movie adaptation of which was released in 1989.
After Dick Wolf took over as line producer, several stories appeared to be "ripped from the headlines", a trademark of his Law & Order (1990) series. In this episode, he references the civil unrest between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (often referred to as "The Troubles") that lasted 30 years, from 1968-1998. The opening montage (as well as several times in the episode) references the Maze hunger strike where Bobby Sands became a symbol of the war in 1980-81. The episode also contains subtle references to the Apartheid struggle in South Africa that ended in 1994.