Putting Your Hoof Down

• The title "Putting Your Hoof Down" is a play on the saying "putting your foot down."
• Fluttershy parodies the famous line from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!" much like Rarity in Sisterhooves Social.
• When Iron Will appears at the beginning of his assertiveness workshop, the background music borrows from the primary motif of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.
• Iron Will's presentation takes place in the center of a hedge maze, a reference to the Labyrinth of Greek mythology, which held the Minotaur (a half-man, half-bull creature) at its center.
• Iron Will uses a variation of the phrase "I pity the fool", the catchphrase of Mr. T, played by Lawrence Tureaud.
• The storyboard artists had professional wrestler Hulk Hogan in mind when posing Iron Will,[19] who uses hand gestures that mimic Hogan's signature taunts.
• Iron Will's use of illeism (referring to himself in the third person) is similar to that of professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
• The episode incorporates a sound-alike of the theme "The Lonely Man" from the CBS television series The Incredible Hulk.
• Pinkie Pie switches sides to win a rapid-fire argument between herself and other characters, which is the hallmark of the Bugs Bunny cartoon Rabbit Fire.

It's About Time

• This episode borrows elements from Greek mythology:
  • The Cerberus is the three-headed canine that protects the gateway to the Hades, the realm of the dead.
  • Tartarus, the area that the Cerberus in this episode guards, is one of the darker and deeper depths of the Underworld where the wicked are said to depart to after death.
• Future Twilight's arrival is preceded by wind blowing paper around, then she appears in a bright flash and electrical discharge while crouched on the ground, in homage to The Terminator. Present Twilight also refers to an "epic pony war in the distant future", a crucial part of the premise of the Terminator franchise.
• Spike's query of "Isn't this where we came in?" while wandering the Canterlot library echos Pink Floyd's The Wall where the exact line is used to connect the end and beginning of the album into a repeating loop, similar to the time travel cause-and-effect in this episode.
• Future Twilight's appearance resembles Big Boss and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series.

Dragon Quest

• The episode shares its name with a popular RPG series.
• The episode's plot is similar to an episode from the 1980s series My Little Pony, "Spike's Search", where Spike goes on a quest to learn to be a dragon and gets involved with a group of dragons who turn out to be thieves and bullies.
• The scene with Spike traveling down the river on a boat with Cranky Doodle Donkey bears a resemblance to Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• The game "King of the Hoard" the teenage dragons play appears to be the same as the children's game "King of the Hill".