The Way We Weren't/References

Cultural references

 * The episode's title is a reference to the 1973 movie .
 * Another episode title referencing this movie is season 2's "The Way We Was".
 * Marge claims she enjoys Parliament but not Funkadelic in reference to the funk collective popular during the 70's.
 * The song played during the kissing fantasies of young Marge and Homer is "Happy Together", by The Turtles.
 * Homer's imagined perfect world includes Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Quisp flying by in his spaceship, and the Kool-Aid Man—whom Homer kills by drinking him.
 * Before meeting the Sea Captain by the docks, Homer says "I guess it's Roe v. Wade, and it's my right to choose." This namechecks the landmark American supreme court decision on abortion.
 * When the Captain rows Homer across the lake to meet Marge, he sings: "I met her on the mountain, there I took her life. I met her on the mountain, Stabbed her with my knife." These are lyrics from the folk song Tom Dooley, as made famous by The Kingston Trio.
 * This episode shares the same major storyline as the  episodes "It Happened One Summer I & II", where Tony and Angela discover they shared a kiss while at camp.

Trivia

 * The scene where Young Homer tumbles down the cliff and into the lake is strikingly similar to the grown-up Homer's legendary fall down Springfield Gorge in "Bart the Daredevil".
 * Moe breaks the fourth wall and addresses the camera, saying "And that's the origin of that!" before Bart's prank calls when Marge asks for Homer's false name, in which Moe backfires.

Continuity

 * The three girls Bart has kissed are Becky, one of Lisa's friends, who kissed Bart on a dare (his first kiss, in "Flaming Moe's"), Jessica Lovejoy ("Bart's Girlfriend"), and Gina Vendetti ("The Wandering Juvie"). He would later kiss Darcy in "Little Big Girl", as well as an unnamed girl in "The Monkey Suit".
 * Homer lists some of the terrible things he's done:
 * Hiding a gun from Marge. "The Cartridge Family"
 * Suing the church. "Pray Anything"
 * Ruining Lisa's wedding in the future. "Lisa's Wedding"

Goofs

 * In the episode, when Homer and Marge met on the cliffside to kiss, Marge's hair had been straightened and burnt brown from ironing it out, and Homer had been wearing an eye patch. However, in the promotional artwork displaying the same scene, Marge's hair was still upright and blue, while Homer lacked his eye patch entirely.
 * In this episode, Milhouse states that his kiss with Homer in the treehouse was his first kiss. However, in the season 3 episode, "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" Milhouse shared his first kiss with Samantha Stanky.
 * In the flashback, after the boat with the Sea Captain and Homer in leaves the bay, the wooden boat that Homer was originally going to go in has disappeared.
 * In the flashback, Homer would have only fallen less than 1 metre off the cliff, not further, due to the fact that the lake is just below where Homer and Marge had their date.