You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee/References

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You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee

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Trivia

• The title is a parody of the lyrics, "You don't have to live like a refugee", from the song, Refugee. Tom Petty guest starred as himself in Season 14's "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation".
• This episode is the second time Homer acts as a soccer referee. The first was in "Marge Gamer". The events of that episode were mentioned in Lisa's speech about Homer. Also, in both episodes, he has trouble dealing with floppers (Lisa/El Divo)
• El Divo, a player that dives and "breaks his leg" is based on FC Barcelona player Neymar who, in real life, is a known diver.
• Lisa's speech also mentions Homer working two jobs to get her a pony ("Lisa's Pony") and started her playing the saxophone ("Lisa's Sax"). 
• This is the second time the Simpsons go to Brazil. The first time was in the very controversial "Blame It on Lisa". Bart watches Xoxochitla's show, Teleboobies, again in this episode, making Teleboobies' second appearance in The Simpsons.
• Homer says that Rio is the naughtiest city ever since San Francisco got all nerdy. 
• In Nelson's speech about his mom's old boyfriend, he mentions a chained-up man cutting off his own foot to save his family from Jigsaw, referencing what happened in the movie Saw. He says that he saw this movie because his mom's old boyfriend, Nelson's hero, took him to an R-rated horror film when he was 3 years old. He called him Uncle Rob because he robbed the Muntz family. 
• The Stuffwich ads featuring Ezra is a spoof of the Subway ads featuring Jared Fogle, who claimed their sandwiches helped him lose weight and is now behind bars.
  • Jared Fogle has also been spoofed multiple times in South Park.
• The man who offers the match-fixing bribery to Homer gives him a bootleg copy of the 2013 Superman film Man of Steel.
• One of the certificates in Skinner's office is from the Springfield Diploma Mill, which a reference to real life diploma mills, in which universities offer fake degrees for a fee.

• When Martin finished his presentation about his hero, Skinner says "Martin has left the building", which parodies what announcers used to say at the end of Elvis Presley's concerts to crowds who expected an encore.
• When Lisa is trying to think of reasons why Homer is her hero while planning her speech, "Heroes" by David Bowie plays in the background during a brief montage of Homer's various shenanigans seen in thought bubbles.
• According to the newspaper shown after the student fight with Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, it ended only after one student, Ralph Wiggum, was left alone punching himself in the gym.

References to the World Cup

• The World Cup, despite being a central point of the episode and the World Cup tournament as a whole, does not appear and is not seen in any way.
• FIFA is not mentioned in any way.
• The logo is distinct from that of the real FIFA World Cup logo, as does the name.
• It is unknown which team was the winner of the World Cup in-episode, but it seems to be Germany, as Brazilians go sad out of the stadium when the match presumably finished.
• The celebrations of the teams winning are not shown.
• The episode parodies how corrupt some referees in real life are, specially parodying the fact that most referees in the real FIFA World Cups where Brazil is the host, do some 'favors' in Brazil's side.
• This episode managed to accurately predict the winner of the the real World Cup (Germany).

Goofs

• During the plane scene, Marge was using an app on her tablet to learn Portuguese which would require internet, however electronic devices have to be in flight mode for the duration of the flight, and even if they aren't in flight mode, they can't get signal. Some planes/airlines have on board Wi-Fi.
• In the exterior shot of the plane, it is too low to be at cruising altitude, but it is too far from Rio de Janeiro to have begun its decent.
• Despite the World Cup taking place in Brazil, whose official language is Portuguese, when El Divo is taken by paramedics and Homer yells "I repeat, no penalty!", the signs in the background read Spanish.
  • The exit sign in a later scene, however, does read Portuguese ("saída").
• Maggie isn’t with the Simpsons when they fly on the plane, then Maggie appeared with the Simpsons when they eat at a restaurant, then she didn’t appear with the Simpsons when they go through the Amazon.