When Arthur first enters the forest, he sees a dead body with hands sticking upwards and are twisted-like. The exact same shot is used in the movie Rashômon (1950).
The film is referenced twice, once when Naomi Watts's character falls asleep with her laptop and on the screen the film poster is present and when Ken Watanabe's character sings in Japanese and explains to Matthew McConaghey's character that what he was singing was from a Gene Kelly film and he was singing the phrase 'a stairway to paradise'.
Ken Watanabe's character mentions the television show after he tells Matthew McConaghey's character that they should follow the upstream of the river to better find help and that he had learned it from watching the television show.
