$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)/References

Trivia

 * The Rich Texan also makes his debut appearance in this episode, referred to as "Senator" by Homer.

Cultural References

 * The title is a reference to the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
 * Burns's bed looks similar to the one occupied by Keir Dullea's character Dave Bowman in the end of the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 * Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise appear at the casino to reprise their roles from the 1988 film Rain Man.
 * Homer is impressed by the card-counting abilities of a man who resembles the autistic character Raymond Babbitt, also from the film Rain Man.
 * Krusty's show at midnight is similar to Bill Cosby's 1971 album For Adults Only, which was recorded at a casino at midnight.
 * Marge reminds Homer that his lifelong dream was to be a contestant on the television show The Gong Show.
 * Burns's obsession with germs and cleanliness and his refusal to leave his bedroom once the casino opens is a parody on American magnate Howard Hughes.
 * The "Spruce Moose" is a parody of Howard Hughes's impractically enormous wooden plane Hughes H-4 Hercules, which was derisively dubbed the "Spruce Goose".
 * Homer parodies the scene in the 1939 film Wizard of Oz when Scarecrow demonstrates his newly acquired intelligence by reciting the law that governs the lengths of the sides of an isosceles triangle. Unlike in the film, somebody correctly points out that the Pythagorean theorem recited applies to right-angled triangles, not isosceles triangles.
 * Gunter and Ernst, the Siegfried and Roy-esque casino magicians who get attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia. Ten years after this episode first aired, Roy Horn was attacked by one of the duo's white tigers.