The title is taken from the closing line of "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. The 1883 sonnet is inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lacey quotes the line to Cagney, "I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
The video game the two teenage thugs are playing in the laundromat is Space Duel, which was an Atari arcade game introduced in 1982. It was very new at the time of broadcast. Space Duel was a variation of the earlier game Asteroids, with the asteroids replaced by such geometric shapes as cubes, diamonds, and spinning pinwheels (evident as the camera lingers on the screen for a few moments while the boys play the game). Space Duel is notable for being Atari's sole multiplayer vector game.