Ruby Hill always drinks from the same coffee cup; it has the words "Aunt Ruby" painted on it.
In season 2 episode 10, Annie mentions that she "only ever made it to brown birds." Mae Whitman played a Girl Scout on the show Friends (1994) who was a Brown Bird and has her leg broken accidentally by Ross.
The first time Mae Whitman has played an adult character from the start of a TV series. In the past on shows like Parenthood (2010), she had played teens who later evolved into adults at the end of their run.
Kathleen Rose Perkins played Beth Boland in the unaired pilot but was replaced by Christina Hendricks. Jenna Bans told The Hollywood Reporter: "To tell you the truth, the character dramatically changed from Kathleen to Christina. I love Kathleen, Episodes is my favorite show and we were so excited to get her. But the character is a totally different character. Christina's version of Beth is more put together; she's more of a tight-ass, more repressed, more efficient and runs her life with this maniacal efficiency. And the Kathleen version was a little more frazzled and haphazard. That was absolutely the character we hired Kathleen to play and she did an amazing job with it. But for various creative reasons, we took the character in a new direction and that's how it all went down."
Christina Hendricks and Mae Whitman both have voiced the character Lois Lane. Hendricks voiced the character for All-Star Superman (2011) while Whitman voiced a younger version of the character in an episode of Le avventure di Superman (1996).