The scene where Chief Wiggum and the others use dynamite to blow up the whale is based on a true incident that happened in Matt Groening's home state of Oregon. On 12 November 1970, a whale beached itself at the Heceta Head beach (then called Devil's Elbow State Park) near the town of Florence. Usually, when a whale beaches itself, a deep pit is dug in the sand next to the whale and then the whale is rolled into it and buried. However, the sand at the Heceda Head beach is too shallow to dig a pit of the necessary depth, so the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department decided to use a half-ton of dynamite to reduce the whale to smaller, more manageable parts. The ensuing explosion scattered chunks of the whale over several hundred meters. One large piece of the whale totaled a car in a parking lot more than 100 meters away. KATU, the Portland ABC affiliate, filmed the event.
Few people outside of Oregon had heard of the exploding whale until Dave Barry wrote of it in his 20 May 1990 column. Afterwards, it grew into an urban legend that seemed too absurd to be true. In 2006, the KATU footage was posted on YouTube. There is also an article about the incident titled "Exploding whale" on Wikipedia. These were posted after another exploding whale incident occurred in Taiwan in 2004.
When Lisa is watching 'House, MD,' the symptoms written on the white board are "HEADACHE, BLURRED VISION, DECAPITATION."
It is revealed that Lenny's job in the power plant is in customer service. This can be seen when Homer phones the plant and it goes through to Lenny.
In the science fiction film "Tic-Tac-Toe: X v. O", there is a "Tic-Tac-Toe" like war between O and X, each team being represented by Rome-O, Julie-X and a Master. Rome-O and Julie-X mocks the doomed star-crossed lovers from the William Shakespeare play "Romeo and Juliet".
The science fiction film "Tic-Tac-Toe" X v. O" is based on the game "Tic-Tac-Toe", which crosses ("X") and noughts ("O") are drawn.