When describing her music, Tamara Stefano (Kate Eastman) says it's not like Puccini. Giacomo Puccini wrote an opera based on Dante's Inferno.
Dan's VHS collection includes the movie Willard (1971) which is about a man and his relationship with rats. Later Dan finds rats in his kitchen and lays down traps but when he finds one with its tail stuck in a trap, he lets it out and starts nursing it back to health.
In Dante's Inferno (by Dante Alighieri), Dante is guided through the 9 circles of Hell by Virgil; Virgil first takes Dante to a mountainous area. In the show, Virgil takes Dan to a location in the mountains.
There are a few references to "The Shining" (1980), which is also about a man who takes a job that requires him to be isolated in a remote house for a long time. The overhead shot of the car going to the house is quoted directly from the movie, with its winding road surrounded by woods. Furthermore, Jack Torrance, the protagonist of that film, is mentioned by name in this episode (in reference to the fact that he was driven to violent madness by his isolation).
During the interview by Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi), Tamara Stefano (Kate Eastman) describes herself as a composer and the name of the piece she's working on is called "Purgatory". She then puts on ominous-sounding music like what Melody heard the night before. "Purgatorio" (Italian for Purgatory) is also the second part of the Divine Comedy by Dante, the first part being "Inferno", which the show references numerous times. The Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's opera "Gianni Schicchi" alluded to "Inferno", but it was a comedy, so when Tamara Stefano describes her work as not being like Puccini, it's very different on several levels. Her "Purgatory" also contrasts with Dante's original; she calls it a "descent into a shadow world" with a "chorus of human suffering", whereas "Purgatorio" describes the repentant believer ascending to Paradise (the third part of the Divine Comedy, "Paradiso").