- The episode's opening act refers to the Terri Schiavo case. Terri Schiavo was in a vegetative state from 1990 to 2005 by undetermined means while her husband and parents fought each other over continued life support, her parents maintaining she showed signs of recognition and her husband and doctors arguing against. The case became a lightning rod for activists regarding the right-to-life vs. quality of life. In the end, the courts awarded custody to her husband and life support was terminated resulting in her death.
- Jared asks Stewie if he has any Gummi Bears, this is a reference to the film Dazed and Confused, in which David Wooderson asks Mitch for a joint. After Mitch says no, Wooderson quotes "It'd be a lot cooler if you did."
- When Richard Dreyfuss walks into the bathroom and Peter makes the joke, "Are you going to have an encounter with the turd kind?", he is making a reference to a Spielberg film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which starred Dreyfuss.
- Rene Russo appears as a backwoods rustic when she confuses TMZ with the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), a Depression-era project originally intended to electrify much of the South.
- Peter's uncle "The Guy in the White Hat" Griffin is based on the 1963 Robert Jackson photo of the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby of Detective James R. Leavelle.
- Peter disguises himself as "Reginald New York Knickerbocker" when going out for dinner with Angela at the Stuffy Fella restaurant. Peter's name refers to the official team name of the New York Knicks basketball team. The name is derived from a prominent Dutch colonist and his descendants in the colony of New Netherlands which later became New York.
- Peter dressed in denim shorts and a tank top when Angela forces him to go retrieve a Diet Pepsi from the vending machine is a reference to a Diet Pepsi commercial which featured Cindy Crawford.[1]
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