The plot is an homage to Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), about a bedridden woman who accidentally overhears a crossed-wires telephone call in which a murder is being planned.
The lightning bolt shown during the storm is the same one shown during the opening credits of Gilligan's Island (1964), flipped.
For Henry Brandon, who plays the killed character Abel Gorcey, this was the last TV part in his nearly half a century long career.
Jessica does not leave her bed for the entire episode.
At several points throughout the episode, Jessica Fletcher sits in bed next to a 1986 Pocket Books paperback imprint of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novel, "The ABC Murders". This is an inside joke on the part of the art department, as the show's title "Murder She Wrote" is a riff on the Christie novel "Murder She Said (1961)" and it mimics the murder-mystery style shared by many of her novels.