When Will and Jazz are talking about how they tried to steal the mascot, Will says he had the cop convinced that he was Sidney Poitier's son. Will had previously stared in the film Six Degrees of Separation (1993), where his character turned up with the story that he was Poitier's son.
This episode's title is a play on the title of Maya Angelou's first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
The voiceover heard after Carlton is first shown in the birdcage is a parody of a similar sounding voiceover from the 1960s "Batman" TV series. Instead of "Same Bat time! Same Bat channel!" It's "Same Fresh Prince time! Same Fresh Prince channel!"