The year before this episode aired, a Princeton University physics student named John A. Phillips gained international fame as "The A-Bomb Kid" when he published a paper explaining how to build an atomic bomb using about $2000 worth of easily acquired materials. As here, he was an underachieving student. Also similarly, both his paper and a non-working model he had built were confiscated by the FBI. He later became an anti-nuclear activist, and in 1983 formed a successful non-partisan political consulting firm with his brother, of which he is still CEO (as of 2022).
At the end of the Second World War, former Nazi scientists like Dr. Reinhold Bauer were brought to the United States under the auspices of Operation Paperclip to strengthen the nation research and development programs. A well-known example was Wernher von Braun, who helped found NASA, the US's space program.
Swanson, the man who is the head of the cryonic suspension company, might be an allusion to Swanson frozen TV dinners
Marshal Tito (Josip Broz Tito ) was the leader of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Since the man had Socialist leanings, he was an ally of the former Soviet Union, the mortal enemy of the United States