Bart the Genius/References

Cultural references

 * In the opening scene, Maggie spells EMCSQU with her blocks, a reference to Albert Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equation. A picture of Einstein also appears on the wall of Dr. Pryor's office. At one point Homer erroneously refers to Einstein as the inventor of the.
 * Dr. Pryor compares Bart's proposed work among ordinary children to Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees.
 * The composer of the opera the family attends is named Boris Csuposki, a reference to animator Gábor Csupó. The opera attended by the family is, by ; the song Bart mocks is a famous aria called the Toreador Song.
 * The Simpsons are playing at the beginning of the episode.

Introductions

 * Milhouse has black hair in this episode.
 * This is the first episode where Bart uses his soon to be infamous catch phrase "Eat My Shorts".
 * A Radioactive Man comic book is seen, though the title character's appearance is vastly different from his appearance is later episodes.
 * First episode production-wise of Principal Skinner and Milhouse Van Houten
 * This episode contains the first guest star of the show; Marcia Wallace as Edna Krabappel.
 * This is the first couch gag to visually continue into the TV scene.

Trivia

 * There is a picture of Bart on the wall opposite one of Albert Einstein in Dr. Pryor's office.
 * After Bart comes home green Homer washes him in Turpentine.
 * Homer thinks it was Albert Einstein that invented the light bulb.
 * Maggie falls once when Lisa looks up the definition for "id".
 * This is also the first episode to have Bart's name somewhere in the title.
 * Bart struggles to visualize a math problem. Matt Groening's other show Futurama features a series of mathematic in-jokes.
 * When the Simpsons are playing Scrabble, Homer is complaining that he has not good letters, his slate of letters shows "O-X-I-D-I-Z-E", which is the highest word score one can achieve in Scrabble by using seven letters.
 * Martin Prince is the train conductor when Bart is told to visualize his IQ problems.
 * Principal Skinner devotes an entire file drawer to Bart Simpson.
 * Homer makes a check of seventy-five dollars, to pay for Bart's defacing of school property, to "Dept. of Education".
 * Martin's IQ is revealed to be 216.
 * Bart wears a pink shirt to his first day of class at the "Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children". (Homer later (unintentionally) does this same thing in a future episode.
 * Books on the shelf in Bart's new advanced school classroom include Crime & Punishment, Babylonian Myths, Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick, Plato, Dante's Inferno, The Illiad, Plato, Design of Computers (remember this is 1990), Astrophysics, Wana by Emile Zona, Puskin, Shakespeare I-XV, Quantum Mechanics, and the Life of Leonardo.
 * The Simpsons attend the opera "", advertised as "Tonight Only in Russian."
 * On the opera poster, the conductor is identified as Boris Csuposki, a reference to the name of producer and supervising animation director Gábor Csupó.
 * After he is dubbed a genius, Bart's Principal Skinner graffiti is framed and labeled as a work of art entitled "The Principal" by Bart Simpson.
 * Martin and his parents were at the opera. Mr. Prince is the man commenting on Homer and Bart's boorish behavior.
 * Bart's word Kwyjibo is later used in Champions Online as the name of a super-powered gorilla. Here it's spelled with a Q instead of a K.

Continuity

 * Ms. Mellon is seen dancing with Jacques in the music video Do the Bartman.
 * Homer comments to Bart that for generations Simpson men have dreamed of outsmarting someone. Homer does just that, by outsmarting Cooder in Bart Carny.
 * Someone suggests to Bart that he build a rocket ship. In She of Little Faith, Bart worked on a rocket ship.
 * Dr. Pryor explains that high intelligence is usually caused by hereditary. In Homer Loves Flanders it is mentioned that genetics are making Homer a loser. The Simpsons genetic intelligence was further explored in Lisa the Simpson.
 * In this episode, Mrs. Krabappel states that the IQ tests will have no affect on the students' grades and are merely a reflection of the students' future success, but in the Treehouse of Horror VI story, "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace," she encourages the class to fail their latest standardized test because the school gets more funding this way.

Goofs

 * Marge believes 'He' to be worth 2 points, but in reality it is worth 5. H = 4 points and E = 1 point.
 * When Ms. Mellon writes the solution to the RDRR calculus problem, she omits the 'r' variable in the second line, causing the equation to read as if the 3 is squared instead of the r.
 * Marcia Wallace's name is misspelled as "Marsha Wallace" in the closing credits.