Dupin (Carl Lumbly) tells Pym (Mark Hamill) that he "sees where they get it from," referring to the lawyer's nickname "The Pym Reaper" and suggests they just need a chessboard and a beach. Pym replies that he loves Bergman. This exchange is a reference to the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal (1957) in which a knight in medieval Sweden returning home from the Crusades encounters Death (the Grim Reaper) on a beach and challenges him to a game of chess, believing that as long as he can keep Death playing, he will remain alive. At one point, the knight knocks over the board in an attempt to keep the game going by requiring it be restarted, but Death claims "No one escapes me," and magically restores the board to its playing point. Mike Flanagan's series contains numerous references to the idea that no one can escape the inevitability of death regardless of their actions in life - a common theme in Poe's works - which is also a theme in Bergman's film.
The text of the priest's funeral sermon is from the poem "Spirits of the Dead" by Edgar Allan Poe.
When asking her mother a series of exciting, positive questions, Lenore Kyliegh Curran explains that Morella Crystal Balint blinks twice to answer "yes", demonstrating her lucidity. When Frederick Henry Thomas tells Morella they can get through this together, and when he says he wants to take her home, she clearly blinks once at each statement, ostensibly indicating "no".
Victorine (T'Nia Miller) asks Madeline (Mary McDonnell) how she "got by Kevin Costner." McDonnell starred with Costner in Dances with Wolves (1990).