When Homer puts his daycare permit in the picture frame Bart and Lisa gave him was based on a real-life experience of former writer Dana Gould in which he gave his parents a newspaper article about him winning a Boston comedy competition and later found out that it was replaced by Larry Bird dunking butterfingers. The third act did not initially include a police car chase and it was placed in after the table read. The scratches in Homer's day-care video were added to the animation in post-production.