It is revealed that Scully speaks German.
Vince Gilligan was inspired to write this based on Time-Life mail-order books he read as a child discussing the lives of serial killers. One of the books featured mass murderer Howard Unruh.
Agent Mulder jokingly refers to the pharmacist as "Bruno Hauptmann" after questioning. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was a German carpenter who was executed for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. in 1936.
As he was about to subject Pruitt Taylor Vince to the difficult task of standing on scaffolder's stilts, writer Vince Gilligan felt it was only right and proper that he try them out first. He did so in a parking lot in Vancouver with a bunch of teamsters around him to catch him when he fell.