The episode title is a pun on the 1985 song "The Sweetest Taboo" by the English band Sade.
Apu mentions the Indian rope trick, a magic trick said to have been performed in and around India during the 19th century in which a rope rose by itself and a boy climbed it.
There is a confederate soldier who bears a striking similarity to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Barney plays the role of General Ulysses S. Grant. Homer tells Barney that if he were going to be General Grant, he "had to have a drink". This is a reference to Grant's struggle with alcohol at certain points in his life.
Homer refers to the punctured keg of beer as being "so cold...so cold." These are the words Snowden uses when hit and bleeding, in the 1961 satirical war novel Catch-22.
Milhouse also says these words in season seven episode "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily" after Bart complains that nothing happened to Milhouse after playing with the monkey in the Pier One wicker basket.
American author and journalist Tom Brokaw is giving a speech on the "Remembering WWII" act. The plane behind him is a Vought F4U Corsair.
Professor Frink drives a giant mechanical spider like the one from the 1999 American steampunk Western comedy film Wild Wild West.
When Marge is watching the video of Apu's wedding, Homer gets up with the band and tries to sing "C'è la luna mezzo mare", the song from the wedding scene in the 1972 film The Godfather.
Homer uses a bottle of Mrs. Dash to recereate Apu's infidelity act with Annette.
Moe poured "Windelle", a parody of the hard-surface cleaner Windex, into Marge's drink.
When Manjula first kicks him out of the house, his children hiss at him. This is a reference to the hissing children in the David Cronenberg film The Brood.
Bart acts like Ganesha, the Indian god. He also imitates Dracula.
Marge prepares Tandoori chicken, a dish of Indian origins, for the dinner with Apu and Manjula. Homer also ordered a "Fudge Mahal", a Taj Mahal made of fudge.
When Apu is about to commit suicide, Manjula calls him a "Brahma queen", a pun on Brahma, the Hindu god, and the term drama queen.
Homer bought an edition of The New Yorker in which Apu's cartoon appears in. However, Homer says he purchased it only for the pictures of Lenny taken by American fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon.
When Homer gets in bed after finding out Apu was having an affair with Annette, he is wearing his normal clothes, but after he wakes up after having a nightmare about Apu's affair, Homer is in his sleepwear.
When the episode starts, the Kwik-E-Mart Sign has a green, blue, and white background instead of a green and white background.
