The character of Tom Kovacs is a composite of two actual youngsters that lived with John Wayne Gacy during his murder spree.
The program that the family is watching on television in various scenes is the film Dahmer (2002), which was also written by David Birke in the previous year.
What are depicted as maggots in the film are actually meal-worms, which do not feed on dead animal life.
During preparation for the title role, Mark Holton was horrified as he was learning about John Wayne Gacy and his crimes, including pictures of his victims and their remains.
The pictures of clowns in the final sequences are supposed to suggest that they were images painted by John Wayne Gacy. Actually, they are copyrighted collotype reproductions of the work of Cydney Grossman published in 1954.