The beginning of the episode shows Mr. Burns' casino being demolished with explosion. In the DVD commentary for the episode, Mike Scully stated that there was "a lot of talk" and news reports about implosions at the time. Only directly after the implosion do the on-lookers realize the amount of dust that is unleashed. This is based on an observation by the writers, who noted that, when an implosion takes place, "everybody wants to be right next to them", not realizing that dust and asbestos will "fly in the air". In the DVD audio commentary for the episode, director Affleck stated that the scene was very complicated to animate, and took about "four or five takes" to get right.[4] Scully thought that the explosion looked "fantastic".
Ned claims to prefer Bob Saget as his form of "a good laugh". However, Ned, who holds strict conservative Christian popular culture values, was likely more familiar with Saget's television work, which by this point still tended to be decent and family friendly, than he was with Saget's stand-up comedy work at nightclubs, which actually stood in contrast to his more widely known wholesome TV image and tended to be adult-oriented.
Comic Book Guy's bumper stickers include a series of sci-fi references, including Star Trek (1966) ("I Brake for Tribbles", "My Child is an Honor Student at Starfleet Academy" and "Keep Honking, I'm Charging My Phaser"), Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) ("My Other Car is the Millennium Falcon") and The X-Files (1993) ("The Truth is in Here"), as well as the show itself ("Kang Is My Co-Pilot"). His license plate reads "NCC-1701", the registry number of the USS Enterprise.
While Homer and Ned are driving across a desert toward Las Vegas, a convertible passes them going the opposite direction. In the convertible are two misshapen, distorted humanoid figures that look Ralph Steadman's illustrations for Hunter S. Thompson's book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". The reference was contributed by George Meyer, who stated that, since Homer and Ned were driving to Las Vegas, "we [the Simpsons writers] had to do a Ralph Steadman tribute.
The song used during the chase scene in the casino is "Viva Las Vegas", performed by Elvis Presley. Although he admitted that he has "nothing against Elvis", Mike Scully originally wanted to use a "hard to find" version of the song performed by Bruce Springsteen. However, Scully could not clear the version in time, and therefore had to resort to using Elvis' version of the song.