Grandpa Larkin's favorite soap opera, "Years of Our Days to Live," is a conflation of the popular daytime dramas Days of Our Lives (1965) and One Life to Live (1968).
Psychiatric social worker Roberta Wolashek's confession of love for Grandpa Larkin parallels actress Samantha Harper's own May-December romance. Harper met the considerably older actor Bill Macy in 1969 while they were starring in the stage production and later film version of Oh! Calcutta! (1972). They were married on May 4, 1975 and have been together ever since. (Macy is best known for his role as longsuffering husband Walter Findlay on another Norman Lear sitcom, Maude (1972).)