Season 1
- The names of the main characters are Lucy Preston, Wyatt Logan, and Rufus Carlin. Excellent!
- The team's introduction to the British spy they meet in Nazi Germany: "Fleming. Ian Fleming."
- When Lucy catches Wyatt writing a letter to his wife in 2012, he says it worked in Back to the Future Part II... one of many allusions to the franchise.
- Werner Von Braun says practically the same line Tom Lehrer gives him on That Was the Year That Was:The rockets go up, but who cares where they come down?
'That's not my department,' says Werner von Braun. - Much of "Space Race" is evidently intended to overlap with the greater visibility given to the African-American women who aided the NASA moon project, as seen in the movie Hidden Figures. At one point, Rufus notes how Katherine Johnson was not in Apollo 13 despite how her assistance was vital to that mission.
- Wyatt's cover identity in "Space Race" is an FBI agent named Mulder.
- "The Assassination Of Jesse James" is an extended shout-out to and deconstruction of The Lone Ranger, whom real-life U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves is believed by some to have inspired.
- In "Karma Chameleon", one character's hotel room number is 237, a reference to The Shining.
- When Wyatt is detained in the same episode, Rufus barges in and tells the police officer that a boy just ran out into the bad weather. When pressed for a name, Rufus says Haley Joel. He's kind of creepy looking.
- There's almost a whole plot reference to Eric Kripke's other show, Supernatural. In Supernatural, a man's life is forever changed when his family is attacked and killed. The man then vows revenge and starts fighting a world he didn't even know existed, on the side of what appears to be good. In this, a man's life is forever changed when his family is attacked and killed, and he vows revenge on a world he didn't really know existed before... just on the bad side this time. Papa Winchester and Garcia Flynn even look alike sometimes, if you squint.
Season 2
- In "The War to End All Wars", the abandoned U.S. military facility the team holed up in following the explosion at Mason Industries was previously used by the 303rd Logistical Studies Unit, which was the official cover name for the 1st Special Actions Group from a previous Shawn Ryan produced show, The Unit.
