Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?/References

Cultural references

 * The title references the 1967 film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
 * Homer's song about food resembles, in part, the tune "I Feel Pretty", from West Side Story.
 * The typewriter without an "e" refers to the film Misery.
 * Props seen at Planet Springfield: Herbie from The Love Bug, the coffee mug from Heartbeeps, the cane from Citizen Kane, a script from The Cable Guy (Which Homer proceeds to tear apart for nearly ruining Jim Carrey's career), an alien resembling one from Mars Attacks! (but pink), a model of the Titanic, models of an X-Wing and TIE fighters, and a statue of C-3PO.
 * When Lisa and Homer discuss the language to use in his first review Homer attempts to augment nouns with "groin-grabbingly". Lisa offers the word "transcendent" to which Homer replies, "What about groin-grabbingly transcendent?" "Groin Grabbingly Transcendent" is the name of a song by Jason Becker on his album The Blackberry Jams.
 * The episode was also the second episode of The Simpsons to feature a reference to the movie The French Connection (The first was "The Springfield Connection").
 * Luigi references the "horse head" scene from The Godfather.
 * Homer typing the same thing over and over spoofs the 1980 film The Shining.
 * Citizen Kane is referenced multiple times throughout the episode, such as the "cane from Citizen Kane" and the scene where Homer tells Lisa "people will think what I tell them to think," and that she "can't do this to me, I'm Homer Simpson!" as she leaves the room.

Trivia

 * This is the first Simpsons episode to directly break the fourth wall. Homer tells the audience "We'll be right back" as it cut to a commercial break while gloating about not getting his comeuppance after the second act. In previous episodes such as Duffless and Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part One), they only semi-broke the fourth wall: that is, the characters first appear to be talking directly to the audience, but were in actuality pointing at another character (Barney and Chief Wiggum, respectively).
 * This episode has a television rating of TV-PG D (dialogue), while in reality it deserves to be TV-PG LD (language and dialogue) for what Homer said to the ambulance while driving the kids.