Jon Stewart is mentioned as a comedian who does political humor. Lewis Black is a frequent correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (1996) with Jon Stewart.
Christopher Walken's character, Jack Menken, mentions having worked with elephants in the circus when he was a kid. The summer he was 16 years old, Christopher Walken had a job as part of the lion-taming act of a traveling circus.
When Eleanor is in her hotel room, "Wheel Of Fortune" is playing on her TV, you can hear the contestant say, she wants the letter "S", the host then says "Yeah, there are two of them" and then when there is a close up of the TV, you can clearly see there are three S's on the board.
In the movie, Delacroy wins the national contract to supply all voting machines for the upcoming election. This would be impossible, as all conditions for national elections are determined by each state, and not on a national level.
Tom Dobbs says: "NASA spent 28 Million dollars creating the pen that would write upside down in space. Did you know that? The Russians, how ever, were able to solve this problem with a five-cent pencil! Writes right side up, writes up-side down. After five quarts of vodka, is still writing!" In reality, pencils were originally used by the American and Russian space programs but were discarded because they were impractical for usage in outer space: The wooden barrel is flammable, and the graphite dust generated conducts electricity.
Tom Dobbs: I was always hoping for a Brazilian Pope - Pope Raul - just so we could have nuns in thongs and feathers. That would bring a lot of people back to the Church.