Lisa's story about Christo is historically correct. For his "Umbrella" project, the artist put thousands of large umbrellas in California and in Japan. However, two fatalities connected with that event happened. In California, one umbrella was uprooted during a windstorm, killing one spectator. This forced Christo to close the exhibition early, which led to another incident in Japan, in which a worker was fatally electrocuted while deconstructing the exhibit.
At one point in his dream, Homer sees a clock that drips water. The scene is a reference to The Persistence of Memory, a painting by Spanish Catalan surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.
Couch: A parody of a scene from the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); the Simpsons (wearing cowboy hats) straddle the couch as it drops from a bomb bay door towards the ground.
Marge's painting was drawn by staff animator Amy Clese, who drew it as a recreation of a painting by J. M. W. Turner, an English Romantic painter. According to director Steven Dean Moore, the painting was "pretty difficult" to animate, as it was drawn with a lot of washes and gradients. He added, however, that he was "very happy" with it.