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.
Homer is impressed by the card-counting abilities of the autistic character Raymond Babbitt (played by Dustin Hoffman) from the 1988 film Rain Man; Tom Cruise appears next to him, in character as Charlie Babbitt.
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. The actual act of two people in an oversized pair of overalls playing "Camptown Races" on a giant harmonica was a real act, as well as the break-dancing robot that caught on fire.
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, the 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, unless there is a right-angle in the triangle.
Gunter and Ernst, the Siegfried and Roy-esque casino magicians get attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia. Ten years after this episode first aired, on October 3, 2003, Roy Horn was attacked by one of the duo's white tigers.
The glasses Homer finds belong to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Trivia[]
The Rich Texan makes his debut appearance in this episode, referred to as "Senator" by Homer.
During reruns in Australia as of March 2002, Phil Hartman is strangely credited as a guest star, although he didn't have any lines recorded for this episode, despite the fact that Troy McClure appeared playing gambling with Homer, and Lionel Hutz appeared in the scene with Gerry Cooney (in the background).
Deleted Scene: James Bond and a villain are playing blackjack with Homer as the dealer. Homer gives Bond a joker. Bond tells him he has to take those away from the deck. Then he gives Bond the card with the game rules. Bond loses and the villain takes him away. The staff liked the scene, so they chose to put it in the clip show episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular".
This is the episode in which Marge develops her gambling problem.
Writer Bill Oakley posted the episode's original script on Twitter. It highlights many changes which occurred for the broadcast version, including the full Planet Hollywood scenes.
This is one of the two episodes in the series to have a dollar sign ($) in the title. The other is "Luca$".
Mr. Burns survived twelve economic crises, eight depressions and five tightening belts.
In the United States pageant, Lisa was Florida and Ralph was Idaho. They both won a trophy because Skinner thought that they clearly didn't get any help from their parents, but Homer worked on Lisa's costume, so Ralph alone, whose Idaho costume was really just a piece of paper on his shirt with Idaho written on it, should really get the trophy. Of course the joke was supposed to be Homer doing such a lousy job at making Lisa's costume it was comparable with Ralph's, which was just a shirt with "Idaho" on it.
In Bart's Casino, Milhouse had a magic trick involving putting a black cat into a box and it magically going into his magician's hat. However, it is revealed that there are two black cats and they wouldn't cooperate with the magic trick. Since this episode occurred before "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot" and Snowball II wasn't dead yet, those two black cats actually could have been Snowball IIandSnowball V. Or the cat in his top hat could have been a random stray that looked like Snowball II.
This is the first episode to use the cut and condensed opening sequence.
This is the last episode to air in 1993.
The scene were Homer enters Bart's room kicking out the door and wakes him up ("Bart, I don't want to alarm you, but there may be a boogeyman or boogeymen in the house!") has gained popularity as an Internet meme and various parodies of the scene were uploaded to YouTube.
Goofs[]
The Rich Texan with brown skin
Marge was in the casino with Maggie. Maggie is under 21, so both Marge and Maggie should have been asked to leave, or at least return Maggie home. The casino also let Bart gamble in there before he got kicked out and hired The Squeaky-Voiced Teen as one of the workers. Does it really matter if Maggie was allowed in with Marge or not?
Abe's beard drawn over his glasses
When Abe is rolling the dice, his beard is layered over his glasses for a short time.
Smithers says that the casino staff are legally required to ask gamblers every 75 hours if they think they have gambled enough. However, most would ask people to leave after a much shorter time than that; approximately eight-to-ten hours is the norm.
Sherri or Terri with bright yellow skin
When Homer announces his shift is over at the blackjack table, the Rich Texan's skin color changes from yellow to brown.
When Bart shows the Squeaky-Voiced Teen his casino, Sherri or Terri is drawn with bright yellow skin instead of her usual pale yellow skin color.
