The 'little crush' that Menelaus had on Helen of Troy was enough to launch the Trojan War when Paris of Troy stole her away.
By coincidence, both this episode and an episode of the Fox drama Bones (2005) ("The Pain in the Heart"), which aired on the same night, May 19, 2008, reference Schrödinger's cat.
The show has gained some recognition in China, due to the episode "The Tangerine Factor", where Sheldon (Jim Parsons) tries to learn Mandarin to confront a Chinese restaurant owner for using oranges instead of tangerines for tangerine chicken.
The host at the Chinese restaurant at the end of the episode is the same actor who played in the famous Seinfeld (1989) episode where the characters were waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant.
"Through the Looking Glass" was Lewis Carroll's sequel to "Alice In Wonderland". Like Alice, it too has a strong chess-centered theme. Alice goes through the looking glass, i.e. mirror, to another world where things are recognizable, yet turned sideways. The phrase "through the looking glass" is a metaphor for any time the world turns strange, insane, or otherwise abnormal, as if one were on the other side of the mirror.