For location reference, the Bones studio animators were actually sent to
Morocco.
According to Toshihiro Kawamoto, the character of Vincent was based visually
on Vincent Gallo, while Electra had her
visual origins in Gina Gershon.
Vincent's favored game is marble solitaire, also known as French solitaire.
You can play it free here.
I used to be able to win at this game, but recently I can only get down to
four marbles.
The opening song, Ask DNA,
contains references to the films Earth Girls are Easy and Superfly.
One of the advertisements that the Bebop passes on it's way towards a landing
at the begining of the film is for "Studio Be-Pop", which is an existing recording studio in Finland.
Jet's favored game, Shogi, is a Japanese board game very similar to chess.
One of the more interesting differences between the two games is that in Shogi,
when an enemy piece gets captured, it becomes a piece for the capturing side
and can be returned to the board. For more information, click the link.
The song Cosmic Dare
references the Bjork song, Human Behavior.
Obligatory references to several common manufacturers appear in the film:
Marlboro, Nissin Cup Noodles (called "Rocket Noodles" in KoHD -
'cause it's futuristic!), Coca Cola, and probably some others that I missed.
When Spike first begins searching for Faye's mysterious bounty, he passes
a row of t-shirts. Among them is a
Bones t-shirt. You'll also notice in the same image that a minor character
from Heavy Metal Queen makes an appearance in
the film.
Lee Sampson makes a reference to Captain Crunch. Captain Crunch was a hacker
in the early 70s who discovered how to control phones using a toy whistle
found in Captain Crunch cereal as a prize. Steve Wozniak, one of the greats
from the early days of personal computers, goes into detail about phone frequencies,
the infamous blue box, and the captain crunch whistle here.
The western that Jet and Bob watch at the drive-in is a hybrid of Shane and High Noon.
During the scene where Faye tries to find Vincent from Ed's instructions,
she stands before a wall
that has references to the television show Law and Order and the film Three
Godfathers.