After Lisa initially tells Bart she did not enjoy the Itchy & Scratchy movie to spare his feelings, he prods her into telling him how she really felt, and in her brief but glowing review she mentions Dustin Hoffman and Michael Jackson had cameos and, "They didn't use their real names, but you knew it was them." This is a reference to guest appearances by Hoffman and Jackson earlier in the series using pseudonyms "Sam Etic" and "John Jay Smith" respectively.
The scene where Kent Brockman reports from a Korean animation studio, which is depicted as a sweatshop where the animators are forced to work at gunpoint, offended Rough Draft Studios, the overseas studio that worked on this episode, and Gregg Vanzo (studio creator and overseas supervisor) almost refused to work on it.
First appearance of Bumblebee Man.
Even in the future scene at the end of the episode, the "do not sell a ticket to this boy" photo of Bart at the theater is still there.
While drawing the Steamboat Itchy sequence, the animators jokingly referred to it as "Steamboat Lawsuit". David Silverman explained that he did not know "why [they] weren't sued because there's a shot right out of Steamboat Willie (1928) in [the episode]."