Otto mentions the 80's show "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe" at the dinner table, which starred Jeff Goldblum and this show's semi-regular (appearing earlier in this episode) Ben Vereen, who played a con man in both.
Ava Do, Sneaky Pete's technical advisor used to run a company called Whiz Mob, which she describes as "a brain-trust of former high-end pick-pockets, card sharks, hackers, an art forger, as well as law enforcement and security personnel." Whiz Mob teamed up with law enforcement and security organizations for consulting purposes and speaking engagements. Today Ava and partner Apollo Robbins run Ludus Development, a training and consulting group that provides experiential education and works with film and TV productions like Sneaky Pete.
Early on in the writing process for Season 2, the creative team decided that Marius should closely align with who you'd expect Maggie's son to be -even more so than her actual son, Pete.
According to Technical Advisor Ava Do, a second bison would actually be referred to as "a mimic" not a decoy, by confidence professionals. A mimic is a construct that looks identical or similar to something else and steals you time or space to execute the core deception.
The executive producers have the goal of including at least one small con in each episode of Sneaky Pete. For Episode 208, they thought it would be fun to give Marius the challenge of swindling a buffalo from an antiques dealer.