In the first scene, a runner, Ron Allen, is wearing a red "Mathematica" T-shirt. Mathematica is a computer product from Wolfram Research, widely used in the mathematical and scientific community for programming, computation, and visualization. The design on the shirt shows a type of recursive, fractal figure.
LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, it is used to detect gravitational waves in the fabric of space-time. There are LIGO labs at Caltech and MIT. The detectors are located near Hanford, WA, and east of Baton Rouge.
Paul Erdös, mentioned by Larry, was a real mathematician who had died at a mathematics conference in Warsaw, 20 September, 1996 (about a decade before this episode aired). The number of papers he published during his lifetime (around 1,500, as Larry states) remains unsurpassed as of 2024. His extremely large number of co-authors on various works (over 500) led to the creation of the "Erdös number," a number similar in concept to "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" but for co-authors of academic papers tracing back to Erdös.
This episode shares its title with a 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.