The episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series.
This is the fourth (out of six) Christmas episode in the series; the others are episodes 2.11 The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis (2008), 3.11 The Maternal Congruence (2009), 6.11 The Santa Simulation (2012), 8.11 The Clean Room Infiltration (2014), and 10.12 The Holiday Summation (2017),
Leonard hates Penny's ex-boyfriend Zack, so in his alternate reality, Zack is even more dim-witted than normal, buying so-called 'magic beans' with the rent money. Leonard may have gotten the idea from The Precious Fragmentation (2010), where he and the guys used their lunch money to buy a box full of stuff from a garage sale, and Penny asked "you didn't trade the food for magic beans, did you?"
Amy includes Raj's dog Cinnamon in her connections diagram.
It seems that Kaley had a bit of a cold while filming this episode based on the sound of her voice.