When Hiro appears in the marketplace, he seems confused and disoriented, speaking in a pastiche of references to heroic fiction: Star Trek (1966) (Starship Enterprise); Don Quixote (Sancho Panza, Dulcinea); Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) ("A Jedi's work", light saber, C-3PO); Highlander (1986) ("There can be only one"); Battlestar Galactica (2004) ("Citizens of Caprica", Cylon); and Le Morte d'Arthur (Lancelot).
In the black-and-white scene in which the young Samuel is trying to move rocks, the music is "Karn Evil 9" (First Impression, Part II), from the album 'Brain Salad Surgery' (1973) by Emerson Lake and Palmer. The title "Karn Evil" is a play on the word "carnival" - prescient, since Samuel later becomes the leader of a traveling carnival.