E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) break into the house to obtain the last Tomacco is a reference the film "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and the zombies' attack. A farmer is shown using an elephant to measure his corn plants' height; this is a reference to the song "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" in the musical "Oklahoma!", which features the line "the corn is as high an elephant's eye". The Southern colonel's accent is similar to the Warner Bros. character Foghorn Leghorn and he uses Foghorn's phrase "Sir, I say sir!", while the mudflap on his RV features a picture of him in a
Elephant in the room have elsewhere observed, it is like the Mark Twain story of the little boy who was told to stand in a corner and not to think of a white elephant." A slightly different version of the phrase was used before this, with George Berkeley talking of whether or not there is "an invisible elephant in the room" in his debates with scientists. In 1935, comedian Jimmy Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose Broadway musical "Jumbo", in which a police officer stops him while leading a live elephant and asks, "What are you doing with that elephant?" Durante's reply,