Shout Out / Blazing Saddles

• A dimwitted foreman named Taggart is building a railroad in the intervals of being Hedy ("That's Hedley!") Lamarr's henchman. Cut to Ayn Rand's magnum opus Atlas Shrugged (1957), in which Dagny Taggart is trying to save the railroad her grandfather built...
• Lili Von Shtupp:
  • She is a fairly obvious parody of Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again.
  • Her name is a Shout-Out to two characters in The Great Race: Lily Olay (who sings a song in a Wild West dance hall, and part of that set, specifically the decorative arch over the stage, was reused here) and Baron von Stuppe,
  • Twice, she says "Wilkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome. Come on in!" Her song also includes a brief parody of the famous chair dance.
  • The first time she appears, the melody of "Springtime for Hitler" is played on an old-timey piano.
• Brooks has outright admitted that he gave the huge-but-dim thug Mongo the name "Mongo" in the first place just so he could have another character shout "Mongo! Santa Maria!", a reference to the legendary jazz percussionist Mongo Santamaria.
• Mongo punching out the horse is a reference to Mel Brooks's old mentor, the legendary Sid Caesar of Your Show Of Shows, actually doing that! The horse had thrown his wife from its back.
• The "We don't need no stinking badges!" line is a paraphrase of a line from John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
• Two of Governor LePetomane's staff are named Frankie and Johnny, a reference to the old song "Frankie and Johnny".
• A few classic Hollywood references:
  • Richard Dix evidently once tried to take over Rock Ridge. And the people of the town fought Dix to stop him.
  • "You'd do it for Randolph Scott." "Randolph Scott!!"
  • "Ah, the Doctor Gillespie killings.."
  • "As Chairman of the Welcoming Committee, it is my privilege to extend a laurel, and hearty handshake to our new sheriff."
  • "That's Hedley!"
• When Bart gives Mongo the explosive candygram, the Looney Tunes theme is heard. In general, his tricky antics seem heavily inspired by Bugs Bunny, and he even sounds like Bugs during the candygram scene.
  • After Jim takes a hit from the spliff Bart shares with him, his voice sounds exactly like Mickey Mouse.
• Governor LePetomane is named after the stage name of Joseph Pujol, a Real Life French performer who had masterful control over his flatulence. Incidentally, "LePetomane" is French for "the Farting Maniac."
• Jim's Back Story sounds like an exaggerated version of Al Denton's in The Twilight Zone, "Mr. Denton On Doomsday".
• Bart leads his fellow railway workers in a rendition of "I Get a Kick Out of You" from Anything Goes.
• The hunchback conducting executions is costumed just like Charles Laughton in the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

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