This is the only episode of the series to contain a flashback. David Simon said he would have preferred not to use it, but HBO insisted on it.
The Snot Boogie murder story and Bunk's story of shooting a mouse in his kitchen with his service weapon are true stories from David Simon's book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" which served as the basis for Homicide: Life on the Street (1993).
Reviewers have noted the pilot's grounding in the non-fiction political climate. The San Francisco Chronicle commented that the show had forecast a reduction of the FBI's attention to the war on drugs because of the competing war on terror. David Simon confirms that the pilot was shot only a few weeks after 9/11, but that the writers correctly predicted what the FBI's response would be.
Each season uses a different recording of the opening theme "Way Down In The Hole," against a different opening sequence. For this first season the theme is performed by The Blind Boys of Alabama.
The city of Baltimore had mixed emotions about the series. The civic leaders (and the Governor's office of Maryland) knew the show was brilliant and that it was hugely beneficial to the local economy with jobs and technical services, but the harsh criticism of Baltimore's political leadership and law enforcement (even in fictional form) upset them so much that they asked David Simon to either tone down the criticism or they'd evict the show from production in the city. After Simon told them that he would move production to Philadelphia but keep both the show's setting and all of his views on politics and cops intact anyway, Baltimore decided to drop the matter.