In a 2015 interview with Uproxx, Damon Lindelof explained that before shooting the pilot episode, director Peter Berg told Lindelof that the script made him think about Newtown after the Sandy Hook shooting. He recalled Berg saying: "I read this and I just remember the news that day and what it was like to be completely and totally blindsided and how I related it to my own child, and how some act of completely and totally inexplicably devastating violence breaks the rules because, you know, people are going to get shot in war zones but that”s never supposed to happen. And I just keep thinking about Sandy Hook." Lindelof goes on to explain that while preparing to shoot the pilot, Berg took him to Newtown, and that "the entire town felt just really sad and tragic, and there were ribbons everywhere, and they had built this amazing lighthouse monument that was covered in messages . . . all those things just became embedded in the show at that point."