Lisa jokes she was getting over her "Chester A. Arthuritis", a play on the word "arthritis" and the 21st US President, Chester Alan Arthur. Donald Sutherland ad-libbed the line "you had arthritis?", and the producers liked it so much that they kept it.
This episode introduced two new words to the English language, Embiggen and Cromulent. Embiggen was invented by Dan Greaney and Cromulent was invented by David X. Cohen. Since this episode aired, both have entered the English language as valid words: Embiggen is used in string theory, and Cromulent has entered actual dictionaries.
In the Historical Society, the animators spent a significant amount of time decorating the walls. Besides numerous historical references, they also decorated the walls with Simpsons characters in 18th-century settings. The first painting shows Otto Mann driving children in a horse-drawn carriage. Another painting shows Marge Simpson in silhouette. The last painting shows Professor Frink holding a kite in the manner of Benjamin Franklin.
Donald Sutherland (Hollis Hurlbut) previously played a character named Homer Simpson in The Day of the Locust (1975). The plot of this film (and its 1939 source novel) does not resemble any mainstream Simpsons story, and Matt Groening has issued conflicting statements on whether he used it as a naming source.