Although some people thought that the film was inspired by the 1992 murder of Stuart Tay, an Asian-American youth who was killed by four of his peers on New Year's Eve in Orange County, California, filmmaker Justin Lin has stated that "at the very beginning of the writing process, [he] made a conscious decision not to base it on that, or any other, real event."
When Daric first hands Ben a cheat sheet, Ben crumbles the piece of paper. However, after Ben completes the cheat sheet and returns it to Daric, we see that the paper is not wrinkled, but neatly folded.