The prison world pays homage to the dystopian reality of George Lucas' USC student film THX 1138 (1971). Prisoners dressed in white, living a sterile existence, where their work gives them purpose.
Star Wars vet Andy Serkis makes a non-Snoke appearance in the episode.
First on screen mention of the prison world Belsavis, a planet that used to be a part of the Rakata Empire (who also had their first on screen mention in Andor), the Rakata turned it into a penal colony, building massive underground prison complexes to contain dangerous individuals like Force users. Belsavis was first mentioned in the 1995 novel "Children of the Jedi" by Barbara Hambly, having entered an ice age around 5,000 BBY the surface was mostly covered in ice, but pockets of geothermal activity created pockets of jungle oasis where a colony of survivors from the Great Purge lived in the novel. The planet's first appearance was in the video game Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011), during the Great Galactic War between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire around 3,600 BBY the planet was discovered by the Republic, they made use of the existing underground prison facilities, which still functioned after 20,000 years, to confine dangerous Sith Lords captured during the war, and built new prison facilities on the surface oasis to contain warlords and other extremely dangerous criminals. Belsavis and its prison facilities continued to be used by the Republic through the centuries, bounty hunter Jango Fett was even held there once for a short time. This episode establishes that the Empire continued to use the planet as a penal colony.
The yellow jacket Bix Caleen wears is the same style jacket that Luke Skywalker wears at the Yavin Ceremony at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope.
In his antiques store, Luthen Rael is holding a fossil of Orthceras, an extinct 460 million year old cephalopod from the Baltic area.