This episode contains two of spoofs on Hollywood celebrities: Gina Lollolasagna is a play on Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023) and Sedda Parsnips is a joking reference to the feuding gossip columnists Hedda Hopper (1885-1966) and Louella Parsons (1881-1972).
The title is based on the 1903 novel "The Call of the Wild" by American writer Jack London about a domesticated dog named Buck who returns to the Alaskan wilderness.
An allusion to William Shakespeare comes when Professor Guildenstern refers to his late colleague Rosencrantz, the names are those of the two ill-fated friends from the play "Hamlet".
The opening of this story is a movie premiere, which is introduced first by a wide, night shot of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, followed by a closer shot of cars and people arriving under an awning, with a poster for The Robe (1953) in the background and a banner over the entryway on which the words "Robe" and "Technicolor" are clearly visible.
When Dobie is talking about Maynard becoming a movie star, he holds up a photograph of an aerial view of Hollywood (view to the North), with Hollywood and Vine, the nearby Pantages Theatre and the Capitol Records building in the center. After that, he shows an aerial photo of what was then Warner Bros West Coast Studios (also a Northward view) on Sunset Boulevard at Van Ness, currently (2022) the home of television station KTLA, the Sunset-Bronson Studios and a production facility for Netflix.