The cover was drawn by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb after the band's original cover idea, a picture of the group naked in bed together, was dropped by the record company.
The album's cover art was designed by Karl Kotas and is a spoof of Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Cheap Trick | Cheap Seats | The Thrills | Cheap Imitation | Thrills | The Cheap Show | The Cheap Detective | Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches | Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (song) | Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (album) | Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap | Cheap Thrills (Big Brother and the Holding Company album) | Cheap Thrills |
With these immense sets and scrims, lighting designer James F. Ingalls created a dark world within retro 1960s suburbia and costume designer Martin Pakledinaz created costumes that helped bring to life Burns’ world, described as being "at the juncture of fiction and memory, of cheap thrills and horror."
The album contains samples from a wide variety of sources, ranging from the Michael Jackson song "Thriller" sampled in "Cheap Thrills"; to The Smiths song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" in "Holla Plastique"; and even "A Whole New World" by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, as featured in Disneys Aladdin, in "Driz Hollering".