The Coen brothers film A Serious Man, nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Picture, took some inspiration for the visuals based on Zellar's book the Suburban World: The Norling Photos.

[2] The desire for "privacy and solitude" brought about his affection for isolation amongst the "gravel roads surrounded by fields, and I loved to make that walk and have that feeling, that realization that it wasn't hard at all to disappear in this huge country".

[2] Jim Walsh summarized, "For 20 years, Zellar has made a career out of ferreting out some of the most fascinating characters that Minnesota's margins has to offer.

[3] Zellar noted that the 1985–86 Hormel strike deeply affected his hometown and ultimately his interests in covering the American Rust Belt.

[4] The book was a collection of the "complete photo negative and print archive" by Irwin Norling, an engineer at Honeywell and freelance photographer for the Bloomington, Minnesota police department.

[9] John Mahoney of American Photo Magazine noted the contrast in the landscapes as the "brave new worlds and pervasive virtuality of Silicon Valley, the Depression-era remnants of agricultural settlements and immigrant communities in the San Joaquin, and the other-worldly boom-and-bust landscapes of Death Valley, where the Manson Family holed up at the tail end of the 1960s.

[17] Zellar is also a noted blogger, having been a professional blog writer for City Pages and The Rake, and having found a popular audience in Ireland and Australia, according to Margaret A. Pribel of the Minnesota Magazine and Publishing Association.

[20] Josh Ostergaard's book, The Devil's Snake Curve: A Fan's Notes from Left Field, references some of Zellar's baseball materials.