The storyline and jokes about Daphne's weight gain were ploys to cover up Jane Leeves's real-life pregnancy with her daughter Isabella. This episode, however, is the first one in which Daphne's weight problem is acknowledged.
Niles' (David Hyde Pierce) response to Martin (John Mahoney) at the awards dinner -- "I'm not some green-eyed monster burning with envy for Frasier" -- is a reference to William Shakespeare's "Othello" (Act III, Scene iii): "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock, / The meat it feeds on."