E. Peterbus Unum/References

• When Joe, Cleveland, and Quagmire discuss tax refunds, Charlie Brown in a ghost costume claims he only “got a rock.” This parodies a scene from the Peanuts Halloween television special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in which the characters trick-or-treat and Charlie Brown consistently receives rocks.
• Joe mentions his fondness for action film star Steven Seagal.
• During Peter’s mindless ramblings, he mentions breakfast cereal Special K, actress Kaye Ballard and the dabbling duck-breed the mallard.
• When Peter receives his notice from the IRS, he mistakes the word audit for the German automobile maker Audi (according to Peter, “It’s a foreign car; the ‘t’ is silent”).
• At the IRS audit, Peter yelps over the recent cancellation of the FOX drama Party of Five, but forgets about the show the next minute. In the future episode “Stuck Together, Torn Apart,” Peter dates Party of Five co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt and mistakes the show for a pornographic film.
• When Peter digs in the backyard, Stewie warns him that he may find “a human skeleton with a Lincoln log,” a popular toy, “jammed in the temple.”
• When Quagmire’s sex doll shuts down, it says “Goodbye,” as the Internet service provider America Online does when users log-off.
• The scene in which Peter insists on drawing the repairman nude parodies the scene in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets in which Greg Kinnear draws Helen Hunt nude.
• A flashback shows that Peter’s grandfather Josiah Griffin, was an animator for Warner Brothers, who wanted to name Bugs Bunny Ephraim the Retarded Rabbit.
• Lois gives Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa a televised tour of her house. This is a parody of the tour First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave CBS newscaster Charles Collingwood in 1962. Lois is dressed in a pink suit similar to the one Jackie Kennedy wore the day John F. Kennedy (her husband) was assassinated.
• As First Lady of Petoria, Lois says she wants to be like the President Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary Clinton, “only, you know, without the penis.”
• A flashback shows Peter’s ancestor “Ulysses S. Griffin,” based on Union General Ulysses S. Grant, winning the American Civil War in a drinking contest against Confederate general Robert E. Lee. In reality, Lee never drank.
• Peter asks Horace, “Do you think G. Gordon Liddy paid for his drinks when he was strangling people with piano wire for the good of our nation?” Liddy was one of President Richard Nixon’s chief operatives in the Watergate scandal. Although he admittedly participated in several criminal acts (and served jail time), he has never been charged with strangling a person with piano wire.
• Peter sings “Can’t Touch Me,” in which he boasts of his diplomatic immunity. The song parodies the 1990 hit “U Can’t Touch This” by M.C. Hammer. Hammer himself appears in the clip, and Peter brags that Hammer can’t sue him for use of the song.
  • During the song, Peter sings “Just like the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 2, I’ve got diplomatic immunity, so Hammer, you can’t sue.” In that film, Joss Ackland’s character plays a diplomat who runs a drug smuggling ring out of the South African consulate in Los Angeles.
  • Anti-litter mascot Woodsy Owl appears during the song in reaction to Peter’s littering. (See “Give a larbage, throw out your garbage.”)
  • During the song, Peter challenges television personality Regis Philbin to rap as well as him, and invites everyone watching to do the Bump.
• A diplomat at the United Nations tells Peter, “I used to be a laughing stock around here until my country invaded Kuwait.” The diplomat is likely Tariq Aziz from Iraq and is referencing events of the 1991 Gulf War.
• When asserting his right to annex Joe’s pool, Peter senselessly refers to the word “the” in Geneva Conventions(in a nonexistant section), which regulates treatment of prisoners and civilians during a time of war.
• Bill Clinton is nude during an army briefing. This is most likely a reference to his very informal bull sessions, as well as his sexual escapades while in office.
• The U.S. Military refers to the stand-off against Petoria as “Operation Desert Clam,” a parody of Operation Desert Storm, their name for the 1991 Gulf War.
• The political roundtable talk show in which the guests are separated by four squares ends with Alice from The Brady Bunch appearing in the center square as she did in the show’s theme song.
• Actress Susan Sarandon appears to do an ad campaign seeking donations to feed the children of Petoria (Stewie). She says, “Many of you know me as Tim Robbins’ mother but I’m actually his girlfriend,” referring to jokes about their age difference. Sarandon is twelve years older than Robbins, obviously too young to be his mother. Stewie then makes a joke about her large breasts, saying she could feed the starving children of Petoria (himself) with them.
• When Stewie uses newspapers as diapers, he gladly defiles the comic strip The Family Circus, referencing Jeffy, a character in that strip.
• Peter holds a pool party for leaders of nations who congratulated him on Petoria’s “invasion” of the US.
  • At the pool party, former President of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic jokes that his cole slaw is “made out of people,” a reference to the film Soylent Green.
  • The former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein talks with Libyan president Momar Quaddaffi at the pool party about “The Junior Mint” episode of Seinfeld (the one where Jerry thinks his girlfriend’s name is Mulva because the only clue about her name she gives is that it rhymes with a body part found on a woman). Interestingly, another Seinfeld episode featured a Hussein lookalike warning a coatless Kramer and George “you’ll catch your deaths” from being out in the cold.
  • Peter’s pool party is also attended by Cuban president Fidel Castro, Panamanian General Manuel Noriega, despite the fact that Noriega had been in a Miami prison for drug smuggling for more than seven years at the time this episode originally aired. Some famous leaders who are now dead attend the party including Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, who died in 1976, Ayatollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 (but was alive when the episode was made) and Saddam Hussein, who was hanged in 2006 (also alive when the episode was made).
• Mayor West invited civil rights leader Jesse Jackson to open the negotiations with a prayer. However, he could not be there, so West settled for LaToya Jackson, singer and sister of Michael Jackson.

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