"The Evening Gazette" is based on the real-life "New York Evening Graphic", the most sensational of all the "Front Page"-era tabloid papers (critics called it the Porno-Graphic). The paper, owned by Bernarr Macfadden, was published from 1924-32. At the time this film was made, the Graphic had been losing circulation, because its new editor had been trying to make it a more respectable paper, just like in the film. The paper was best known for its "composographs", composite photographs used to create an otherwise unobtainable illustration. Louis Weitzenkorn, who wrote the original play, entitled "Late Night Final", had been a reporter and managing editor on the "Evening Graphic".

When Nancy Voorhees Townsend is at the newsstand and picks up the Evening Gazette with her photo from 20 years ago beside the photo of the man she killed back then on the front page, the headline above the two photos is "Nancy Voorhees Story". But after she walks away with it to pay for it, another copy with the same two photos on the front is shown at the newsstand, but with the headline "2 Die in Subway Cave-in". After she pays for the one in her hand, that's loosely folded in half, part of the headline on it can be seen, and it isn't "Nancy Voorhees Story" as it had been - it's now the "2 Die in Subway Cave-in" headline. That same 'subway' headline is in the next shot when she sits down at the desk at her apartment to read it, before she hurriedly hides it in the drawer when her daughter enters the room.

Featured in When the Talkies Were Young (1955)