The fire takes place in Dratch Valley. Daniel Dratch is the producer of the show and brother of actress and former SNL cast member Rachel Dratch who had appeared in Mr. Monk and the Missing Granny (2004).
Jennifer Lawrence plays the Mascot. Before the shoot, she told everyone that she was going to play Emily, but when she got there, she found out that she was going to play the Mascot. She said in an interview in 2016 that it was embarrassing for her.
In the late 1950s Watson and Crick established the double helix structure of DNA, but DNA was discovered in 1869 and DNA's involvement in genetic inheritance was known by 1943. Rosalind Franklin's x-ray crystalology work on DNA gave Watson and Crick the data they needed to figure out the double helix. She would have shared their 1962 Nobel Prize but she died in 1958 and the Nobel committee would not give posthumous awards.
Natalie getting kicked out of the game leaving only Monk is a direct reference to Hoosiers where Gene Hackman gets kicked out of the game, leaving an unprepared Dennis Hopper to coach the team.