The title comes from the last lines of the poem, "The Hollow Men", by T.S. Eliot: This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the only appearance Lee Meriwether makes in this series. She would go onto much larger and recurring roles in other TV shows, such as The Time Tunnel (1966) and Barnaby Jones (1973), as well as filling the iconic role of Cat Woman in the movie Batman: The Movie (1966).
The one and only appearance of Jack Dodson in this series comes early in a rather prolific acting career that spanned 4 decades, his best-remembered role coming just a couple of years later when he played Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and in its spinoff Mayberry R.F.D. (1968).
This is the second of three appearances Laurence Naismith makes in the series, each time playing a different character, the other two appearances occurring in Last Second of a Big Dream (1965) and The Shattered Silence (1967).
As Miss California, Lee Meriwether was crowned Miss America in 1955.