Tripping The Rift - References To Popular Culture

References To Popular Culture

• Throughout the series, Chode has to answer to charges made by The Confederation. The Confederation is a parody of the United Federation of Planets from the Star Trek universe.
• In one of the original short films made for the Internet, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine alumna Terry Farrell provided the voice of Six. Originally, this film short featured Patricia Beckmann as the voice of Six and was subsequently replaced by Farrell's voice for an episode of the Sci-Fi Channel's short film series Exposure in which Farrell was guest host. Farrell's version of Six was heard only once on television.
• In the opening sequence Six reads a book where the words "Once Upon a Time" resemble the Star Wars opening crawl, Gus is seen using a vacuum cleaner that looks and sounds like R2-D2, Whip flies a remote-controlled model of the Enterprise, in "Love Conquers All...Almost" the crew is assisted by a short green creature who speaks in "Yodic" like Yoda, and there is a view of the back of T'Nuk's chair that resembles the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bob the computer utters a different phrase in each opening sequence (as Darph Bobo threatens the ship), including on one occasion referencing voice actor John Melendez's recent appointment as announcer for The Tonight Show.
• Former SNL writer/castmember Terry Sweeney and his partner, Lanier Laney, are credited as story editors and creative consultants. Sweeney and Laney are also credited for writing several episodes.
• Ghostface from the Scream trilogy is a judge in some episodes.
• In the episode "Roswell" (Season 2), when the Greys try to use their "On Star" system to call for help, it mentioned that service will arrive in six centuries. Since the events of Roswell took place in 1947, that means that the characters from this series come from the year 2547.
• The writers reacted very fast in the second season, premiering with the "You Wanna Put That Where?" episode featuring a straight "Governor McJersey" on an all-gay planet, a direct take-off of disgraced New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey.
• The Cuttlefish of Cthulhu from the band GWAR makes an appearance in the "Power to the Peepholes" episode as the head of Gus' innertube.
• In the PC Game "Master of Orion 3" there is a leader named Cha Hode' who is nearly identical in both appearance & description to the character from Tripping the Rift.
• In the events leading up to the World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm, players can earn the achievement Tripping the Rifts by closing one of each type of elemental rift.