Mick Jagger was originally going to play cowbell and sing backup vocals during Carly Simon's performance of "You're So Vain". He had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts so Chevy Chase took his place.
Carly Simon's performance was pre-recorded without an audience due to her stage fright. This was the first time a musical guest did not perform live on the show's stage.
In "The Final Days" sketch, the Abraham Lincoln portrait's final line was originally "Because you're such a schmuck," but the censors made writers Al Franken & Tom Davis change the last word to "dip". The censor reasoned that "Schmuck" is Yiddish slang for "dick". Franken and Davis performed an expanded version of the sketch in July 1977 at Dudley Riggs' Seven Corners in Minneapolis. This time with Franken as Nixon, Davis as Kissinger, and Lincoln using the word 'asshole'.