According to the DVD commentary, the writers and producers considered this to be the worst episode of Season 5. The entire commentary is devoted to the theme "What Were We Thinking?"
The character of Buffy Sanders is a reference to Buffy Summers from the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After reading Chloe's article, Pauline Kahn mentions to her that the Daily Planet isn't interested in stories about "slaying Buffy the Vampire." Writer Steven S. DeKnight also produced, directed and wrote for several episodes of both Buffy and Angel. Laura Vandervoort is reportedly a huge fan of Buffy and as a kid, wrote a letter to its creator Joss Whedon. She has stated the highlight of being on Smallville was working with James Marsters, who played the character Spike on Buffy and Angel. Buffy has a similar themed episode to Smallville's "Labyrinth", called "Normal Again", in which the title character was drugged into believing that she was in a mental institution for dreaming up her life as the Slayer. The main difference is that Clark believed that he was in a mental institution at all times, while Buffy merely suffered flashes back and forth between the real world and the hallucination. Whereas the main similarity was that they both were superpowered heroes around their friends, in a perfect world.
James Marsters' character tells Clark "There's no such thing as vampires." Marsters starred in nearly every season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", as well as the last season of its spin off show "Angel", as the vampire Spike.
Clark dresses as the main character from the many movie and television adaptions of Zorro. In virtually every adaptation, Bruce Wayne's parents were killed after watching a Zorro film.