Ready, Willing, and Disabled/References

• Five wheelchair symbols are arranged like the Olympic Rings to create a logo for the Special People’s Games (a reference to the Special Olympics).
• A cutaway shows Peter working out in “Richard Simmons’ Sweatin’ to Books on Tape,” a parody of Simmons’ Sweatin’ to the Oldies series of exercise videos. The book on tape is Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom.
• The robber wearing a Jimmy Carter mask is a reference to the Keanu Reeves action film Point Break, as Lois points out after much difficulty.
• When encouraging Joe not to quit, Peter mentions several setbacks in the life of President George W. Bush, including his 1966 arrest for drunk and disorderly conduct, his 1976 DUI conviction, “losing millions of dollars of his father’s friends’ money in failed oil companies” and losing the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election. Peter also mentions that Bush “knock[ed] that girl up,” although no journalists found evidence that Bush had impregnated any woman prior to the conception of his twin daughters.
• Like many famous athletes, Joe appears in an ad for a breakfast cereal similar to Wheaties, only he is endorsing “Wheelies.”
• Chris and Stewie watch a parody of the television show Touched by an Angel.
• Brian reads Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
• After Stewie threatens to do to Brian “what I did to John Lennon,” implying he shot Lennon, a flashback shows Stewie introducing Lennon to Yoko Ono, referring to the notion that Ono led to the breakup of the Beatles.
• After the money clip is claimed, Stewie’s cries imitate those of Peanuts character Charlie Brown, “AUUUUUGH!!”
• When Stewie is waking up from the fight over the money, he refers to Seinfeld with how he should not have to split the bill because he only got soup.
• Almost sixteen years to the day before this episode aired, Alex Rocco guest starred on Bea Arthur’s popular show The Golden Girls (in the episode “That Was No Lady”), as a married man with whom she was having an affair.
• After Joe tells the kids they should post a sign about the money, a carhop brings him an enormous side of ribs, a la the opening of "The Flintstones." This scene refers to a similar Flintstones episode where Wilma made Fred put an ad in the paper for money he supposedly found.
• When Chris, Meg, and Stewie are struggling over the money clip, the room is illuminated intermittently by lightning flashes coming through the window. The scene is reminiscent of the life and death struggle between Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, and the psychic Helga Ten Dorp from the 1982 movie Deathtrap.
• In the scene where Peter sneaks into Goldman's pharmacy to steal the steroids, Mort is heard singing I Got a Name by Jim Croce.

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