The Architects of Fear - Legacy

Legacy

• The Showtime series The Outer Limits revisited this episode with "Afterlife", using a more alien approach to the main character, played this time by Clancy Brown. The ending in this case saw the aliens coming to retrieve their new "brother".
• This episode is similar to the ending of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book mini-series, Watchmen. According to Moore, while he was writing issue ten, he came across a guide to cult television that featured this episode and was surprised by its similarity to his already planned ending. However, editor Len Wein said that "it simply stole the ending to an episode of 'The Outer Limits,' which Alan fully admitted!" Wein found reusing the episode's ending to be unacceptable, and quit the series when Moore refused to change it. A promotional spot for "The Architects of Fear" is overheard on a television in the novel's penultimate scene. When writing the prequel series Ozymandius, Wein specifically referred to this episode as the in-universe source of the idea, as yet another jab at Moore.
• In 2011, Paul Krugman mentioned the episode when he said that building a defense against a fictional alien invasion could speed recovery from the late-2000s recession; however, he mistakenly attributed the episode to The Twilight Zone instead of The Outer Limits.
• Filmmaker Kevin Smith has stated that, before offering him the chance to write Superman Lives, Warner Brothers offered him two projects: A remake of 'The Architects of Fear' and Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.