The department fails to issue a pay check to Phil Fish (played by Abe Vigoda) because it mistakenly records him as having died. In real life, this same mistake became a problem for Vigoda himself when, on more than one occasion, the media incorrectly reported him as dead. His experience has inspired numerous jokes in pop culture. Archie Bunker become victim to a similar scenario two years earlier.
Fish refers to a movie he saw the night before as "old people being turned into crackers and being fed to young people." He is undoubtedly referring to Soylent Green (1973), a popular film at the time in which the hero finds out people are being turned into food.
One of the plots of this episode deals with officers from "Manhattan South." This precinct is home to the characters on Kojak (1973), another police TV show set in New York City, airing at the same time on a different network.