When Sarah and Heather (Nicole Richie) are in the Orange Orange, Sarah says that she has tried her hand at acting and was in a national TV commercial eating a messy cheeseburger. Richie's ex-BFF Paris Hilton was also in a TV commercial for Carl's Jr. with a messy cheeseburger.
In the opening scene, the deejay on the radio refers to a song request from Heather Chandler at James Buchanan High. In keeping with the retro-high school theme, James Buchanan High School is the school in the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter (1975).
Sarah's name in high school was Jenny Burton.
Chuck is impressed by the DU-97, a 30-teraflop computer. Flops are a measure of computing speed for complex work. For perspective: in 2000 the fastest supercomputer was 5-teraflops; in 2005 it was 280-teraflops; in 2010 it was 2500-teraflops. Today, some home computers are in the teraflop range.
Heather Chandler's (Nicole Richie) name is a possible nod to the high school dark comedy Heathers (1988) in which one of the title antagonists, and head "mean girl", shares the same name.