When trying to recruit a ship captain at the town hall in the episode, Shawn mirrors Robert Shaw in Jaws by dragging his fingers down a chalkboard (here, a whiteboard, with an assist from Gus) and states to the crowd, "You all know me, you know what I do for a living," a quote from Jaws.
Shawn mentions that Gus wants to catch the season finale of "Leverage." Guest star Jeri Ryan had a recurring role as grifter Tara Cole in Leverage (2008). Leverage co-creator John Rogers joked that in his mind Shawn Spencer and Leverage's Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane) are cousins.
The website Shawn is looking at to determine what type of knife may have been used during the shark attack is shawknives.com. Robert Shaw played Quint in the first "Jaws" movie, the film this episode spoofs.
Spot the Pineapple: in the last seconds of the episode, Shawn holds up a bottle of sunscreen that has a pineapple design.
Shawn asks Lassiter "you saw the knife wound, did you not?", after saying he and Gus would have made the same guess that it was murder. This is one of many times throughout the series that Shawn exposes how he really solves cases: through extreme attention to detail and deductive reasoning, and not through psychic powers.