The line "Tonight on 'Music from the Hearts of Space.'" Refers to a radio program that focuses on New Age music which has been renamed "Hearts of Space." The show is also parodied during one of the host segments as "Music from Some Guys in Space." The show actually sent the MST3K producers several albums after the episode aired.
The line "They're gonna die in that Samurai jeep anyway" refers to the Suzuki Samurai, a compact SUV that was declared unsafe in 1988 by "Consumer Reports Magazine."
The line "Something there is that doesn't love a crummy monster film...That's from 'Mending Monster Film'" is a parody of "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," the opening line of 'Robert Frost''s 1914 poem "Mending Wall."
The line "These are cola nuts. These are uncola nuts," refers to a famous 7-Up ad campaign starring Geoffrey Holder, which involved 7-Up calling itself "The Uncola."
Joel says, "Pod people got no reason to live," a reference to Randy Newman's satirical 1977 hit "Short People," which featured the lyric "Short people got no reason to live."