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. Goodall was pleased to be mentioned in the episode, sending the program a letter, and Vitti a signed book. Jane Goodall was later featured as a major guest star in the episode "Simpson Safari".
 * The composer of the opera the family attends is named Boris Csuposki, a reference to animator Gabor Csupo. 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.

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 spells out EMCSQU (or E=MC²) on her building blocks.
 * Maggie falls once (As Lisa looks up id).
 * This is the first (and so far, only) couch gag to visually continue into the TV scene.

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 tile character's appearance is vastly different from his appearance is later episodes.

Hard to See Stuff

 * When the Simpsons are playing Scrabble and 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 cheque of $75, to pay for Bart's defacing of school property, to "Dept. of Education".
 * Martin's IQ is 216.
 * Bart wears a pink shirt to his first day of class at the "Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children".
 * 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 play on the name of producer and supervising animation director Gabor Csupo.
 * 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.

Connections to future episodes

 * The Gifted School Teacher 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.

Cultural References

 * the family plays this.
 * Maggie spells E=MC2 with blocks, a portrait appears in Pryor's office and Homer refers to him as inventing the lightbulb.
 * Pryor refers to Bart's work as being like her and chimps.
 * the family goes to see this.
 * Gabor Csupo: Boris Csupowski is a pun.
 * Bart sings a different version.