War of the Coprophages featured insect-like robots designed by roboticist and author Rodney Brooks. Morgan was also inspired by Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells's book "The War of the Worlds" (which had caused mass hysteria), with the episode's title being a direct reference to the novel (with the last part of the episode's title, "coprophages", referring to a dung eater). The town featured in this episode also takes place in—Miller's Grove—is a play on Grover's Mill, the setting of Orson Welles's 1938 radio adaptation. Originally, a scene featuring the sheriff discussing a noted case of hysteria from the 1930s was planned
Black smoke (The War of the Worlds) narrator of what he "read of the destruction of Pompeii". The smoke is very dense, and can be avoided by climbing to higher places. Although Wells never explains the smoke's mechanism in the novel, he mentions that it may bind with argon to become toxic. In reality, argon cannot combine with other elements, with the marginal exception of fluorine, but chemical weapons were widely used in human warfare after Wells' novel was written, especially in World War I. Orson Welles' radio adaptation dramatizes the effects of the black smoke: The poison is depicted as being potent enough to render gas