Saturday Night Live season 28

• Jim Cummings who does voicework in such children's cartoons as The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, and Animaniacs, was credited for doing voicework in the "Smurfette Show" TV Funhouse (Cummings voiced Gargamel and Papa Smurf).
• Ben Affleck was originally supposed to appear in the sketch where Matt Damon meets a doctor (played by Chris Parnell) who is also named Matt Damon, but backed out.
• Darrell Hammond played George W. Bush in the cold opening at dress rehearsal, but it was cut due to a poor response from the audience.
• According to a post show interview, Bruce Springsteen was asked to participate in sketches but he declined.
• Will Forte and Fred Armisen's first episode as cast members

• John McCain was originally booked to host this episode, but was rescheduled to October 19 prior to the season premiere.
• Chris Parnell takes over as George W. Bush from Will Ferrell. Parnell will play Bush five more times throughout the year and then be replaced by Darrell Hammond next season.
• NBC never reran this episode.

• This episode was pre-empted in many areas, including Washington DC, due to a sniper shooting earlier in the evening.

• NBC never reran this episode.

• Anthony Hopkins was scheduled to host this show, but backed out the month before.

• Nelly was originally planned to musical guest on the Sen. John McCain episode, but due to schedule conflicts, he backed out, and was booked for this episode instead.
• Kelly Rowland performs with Nelly on the first song. Cameos for this episode include former SNL castmembers Garrett Morris, Rob Schneider, and Adam Sandler.

• Harvey Keitel makes a cameo appearance during the Versace sketch.
• Jimmy Fallon makes a joke about Phish during Weekend Update. He then ad-libs, "see you next week Trey" as Phish was the musical guest the following week.
• Director Beth McCarthy-Miller later said that Robert DeNiro was "the worst host ever." due to his blatant disregard for direction. However, this did not keep DeNiro from hosting the show for a second time in season 30.

• Al Franken returns in this episode to reprise his recurring character Stuart Smalley.

• According to a post-show interview, Jeff Gordon rejected many sketch ideas, and didn't want to participate in too many sketches.
• A DeMarco Brothers sketch was cut after dress rehearsal because Avril Lavigne had a sore throat.

• Elijah Wood and Red Hot Chili Peppers were considered to be host and musical guest for this episode. Elijah Wood would later host a season 29 Christmas special (with musical guest, Jet) and Red Hot Chili Peppers would later become the musical guest in season 31 for the episode hosted by Tom Hanks.

• During the goodnights, Matthew McConaughey is seen wearing only a towel around his waist.
• Matthew McConaughey grabbed Rachel Dratch's breasts during rehearsals of their blind date sketch. Dratch was not amused and showed footage of the incident when she appeared on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" a few months later.

• During the credits, Beck and his band parody the "Clappin" commercial from earlier in the show.

• Steve Martin, Will Ferrell, and Britney Spears all make cameo appearances in the Weekend Update segment.
• Jim Carrey appeared during the Foo Fighters' second performance, using his leg as an air guitar on stage.
• Two sketches from this episode are included in the DVD version of the SNL clip show special "The Best of Christopher Walken": one is a dress rehearsal version of this episode's "The Continental" , which can be found under the title "The Making of 'The Continental'", in the extras section along with two other sketches cut from dress rehearsal from other episodes hosted by Walken and a sketch where Walken plays a crazy ship captain who apologizes to his life raft mates (played by Seth Meyers, Will Forte, and Fred Armisen) for sinking the ship.
• Christopher Walken receives over a minute of applause when he enters for his monologue, forcing him to repeatedly shush the audience so he can begin to deliever his lines.

• Former castmember Dan Aykroyd appears as Bob Dole in the cold opening.
• Voice artists Jeff Bergman (who is one of the current voices of Bugs Bunny) and Tom Kenny (who voices Nickelodeon character SpongeBob SquarePants) provide voicework on the X-President's TV Funhouse.

• Edward Norton makes a cameo appearance in the monologue because he was dating Salma Hayek.

• The George W. Bush cold opening was a last-minute replacement for a sketch about TV newsanchors gabbing about the Iraq War.

• The "Uday Hussein for President" fake commercial was cut when NBC reran this episode in July 2003 because the real Uday Hussein had been killed during the Iraq war. The fake commercial is also removed from the 60-minute syndicated version.

• Ashton Kutcher and Will Forte previously worked together on "That 70's Show," where Forte was a writer and story editor.

Wayne Wonder

• The musical segment featuring Wayne Wonder is not shown (or mentioned in the opening credits) in syndication.
• Adrien Brody was banned from hosting again following his long and improvised introduction of musical guest Sean Paul.
• In a Howard Stern interview with castmember Tina Fey, Tina said that during a writer's meeting, Adrien Brody constantly dished out sketch ideas for the writers to write, but they were so bad that the writers turned it down, causing Brody to get upset.
• Renée Zellweger was the producers' first choice to host, but she backed out due to personal reasons.

• As part of his monologue, Dan Aykroyd performs alongside John Belushi's brother, Jim, as a Blues Brothers-esque singing group called "The Dancing Refrigerators".
• Rapper Jay-Z joined Beyoncé for her performance of "Crazy In Love."
• Former host John Goodman cameos in 3 sketches as a sign of gratitude to Aykroyd who would make cameo appearances in episodes hosted by him. (John Goodman hasn't made any appearances since this show)
• Dan Akyroyd didn't resurrect any former characters or impressions for the live show. There was a Fred Garvin male prostitute sketch that was cut after dress rehearsal.
• The Astronaut Jones sketch becomes one of the few recent characters to feature guest appearances from Original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" (Aykroyd in this episode and Garret Morris in the Thanksgiving episode).
• Dean Edwards, Chris Kattan and Tracy Morgan's final episode as cast members.