The title is a reference to the film Maximum Overdrive (1986), which starred Yeardley Smith. That film's writer and director Stephen King later made a cameo in Insane Clown Poppy (2000).
Bart's chalkboard gag: It does not suck to be you.
In United States ten codes which police uses, 10-38 is generally known as "Stopping suspicious vehicle".
An employee is shown killing a number of cows with a captive bolt pistol, however the death of the cows are not shown. Originally, the writers wanted to show the cows being killed, however when Scott saw the scene in the storyboards, the staff instead decided to make the deaths "indirect".
The meat-eating contest seen in the beginning of the episode was conceived by writer Donick Cary during a story pitch-out, according to writer and executive producer Matt Selman.