The skeletal robot hands playing the piano during the opening credits were modeled after composer Ramin Djawadi's own hands. Djawadi provided reference footage of himself and some of his musicians playing piano to Elastic, the production company behind the title design.
Some of the songs played in the episode are period piece covers of popular rock songs including "Black Hole Sun" and "Paint it Black".
The second host built, Old Bill, has hands that look fake and it is said that even a handshake could affect the original hosts. This is a reference to the film Westworld (1973), where the only way a host could be identified as one would be by the hands, which weren't life like.
The park has "been operating for 30 years since the last glitch." There is a scene in the lower level which is now used for "cold storage" that looks like the ruins of the original Delos entrance to the park dating back to the original Westworld and Futureworld movies. The depicted Delos entrance was only visible in the sequel--there was no entrance foyer shown in the original Westworld movie. This hints at a continuation of the original story-line rather than being a complete reboot. This would be evidenced as canon if Westworld (1973) took place in 1983 and Futureworld (1976) being set in 1985. 30 years being 2015.
There is a character named Hector Escaton. Eschaton is a word that is used to refer to the end of the world. In some science fiction, it refers to a super-human machine intelligence that will be the ultimate expression of human technology.