"V.I.P." contains a short sample of American group Fort Minor's song "Believe Me".
The film is based on a 1913 William A. Brady-produced play by John Frederick Ballard, Believe Me Xantippe, which on the Broadway stage had starred John Barrymore.
He enjoys the sound it produces and proceeds to play a rendition of Those Endearing Young Charms, until it activates and launches Wile E. into a cactus.
On 26 July 1999, eleven weeks after completing his book Human Freedom after Darwin, Watkins died of a heart attack while sailing his boat, Xantippe, on the Salcombe estuary, South Devon, England.