Pinewood Derby/Trivia

Cultural References

 * Randy dresses up as Princess Leia when he steals the superconducting magnet.


 * The suicide by Mr. Hollis and the response by his son parodies that of a scene in Dead Poets Society.


 * The movies referenced by the newsreader are Contact and Star Trek:First Contact. Contact was referenced in Tom's Rhinoplasty and Star Trek has been referenced in many other episodes. Specifically, Earth being enclosed in a giant "web", closed off from the rest of the universe, is a direct reference to the Original Series episode "The Tholian Web".

Politicians
The Politicians featured in the episode include:

Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom

John Howard of Australia

Nicolas Sarkozy of France

Angela Merkel of Germany

Alexander Stubb, Esko Aho and Matti Vanhanen of Finland

Raila Odinga of Kenya

Silvio Berlusconi of Italy

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil

Vladimir Putin of Russia

Im Young-Bak of South Korea

Felipe Calderón of Mexico

Hu Jintao of China

Taro Aso of Japan

Barack Obama is strangely absent from the episode where Randy is the one representing the country.

Trivia

 * Kyle Broflovski doesn't appear in this episode, possibly because he's in Jew Scouts. Strangely enough, however, his parents are seen standing in the background when the 'space police' land.


 * Kenny McCormick only appears in the bleachers with his dad and Eric Cartman appears in the crowd when the aliens land.


 * Cartman and Kenny don't speak in this episode.


 * Despite not having sons, Mr. Testaburger and Mr. Stevens appear in the bleachers with Wendy Testaburger and Bebe Stevens.


 * Mr. Mackey is revealed to be a member of the scouts as he is seen in a panning shot in a scouts uniform.


 * This episode depicts John Howard as Prime Minister of Australia but Kevin Rudd was voted in a year before Barack Obama.


 * This episode, which was supposed to have aired on February 8th of 2009 on the Latin American MTV, was banned, allegedly due to the complaints of Felipe Calderón due to the infamous image that is depicted about his country. However the Mexican government has since given its approval, and the episode aired on April 4, 2010.


 * In the South Park Season 13commentary for 'Pinewood Derby', Matt Stone and Trey Parker said that this episode was originally going to be about Randy finding a dinosaur fossil that has a gun, and Randy realises that the dinosaurs were wiped out because they killed each other with guns, so Randy tells everyone to get rid of their guns. But someone (to Matt and Trey's dissappointment because they had also planned this to be an hour special) told Matt and Trey that this happened in a Simpsons episode.

Deleted Scene
Randy and Stan are in the car while Randy calls the Hollis'. They claim their car clocked in at 1.2 seconds while Stan's clocked in at only 1.8. This causes Randy to curse and get pissed.