When Ruth (Alison Brie) goes to Russel's apartment with movies, the bag for the video store says "Vidéothèque" on it. Vidéothèque is a real video store in South Pasadena, CA, where Alison Brie grew up.
Bash mentions his strategy to Debbie as being similar to what Kermit the Frog and the rats did on The Muppets Take Manhattan. What Kermit did in that movie was come into Sardi's in a large fur coat (which hid the rats), then had them disperse around the restaurant to start a "whisper gossip" to bring attention to him, while he stealthily replaced one of the caricature pictures with his. For Kermit, things didn't work out so smoothly as Liza Minelli (whom Kermit randomly replaced his picture with) came in wondering why her picture was replaced, and the rats got so overcome by the smell of the food they surfaced and caused a near riot in the restaurant, getting all of them kicked out.