The Series Has Landed reference to the moon from the 1902 French silent film "A Trip to the Moon". Bender impales Crater Face in the eye with his beer bottle after Crater Face attempts to confiscate his alcohol, which is another reference to the film as the astronomers' capsule (which resembles a bottle) hitting the moon's eye when it crashes. The title of the episode itself is a reference to the quote "The Eagle has landed" said by astronaut Neil Armstrong when he and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Fry nearly makes a reference to Neil Armstrong's
The First Men in the Moon direction. Nigel Kneale co-adapted the screenplay (with Jan Read) for the 1964 film version; it is reasonable to assume that Kneale's familiarity with the work may have inspired the idea of the Martian hives which feature so significantly in "Quatermass and the Pit", one of Kneale's most-admired creations. "The First Men in the Moon" has been adapted to film four times, and once prior to that as a mash-up Verne-Wells film: Soon after the publication of "The First Men in the Moon", Wells was accused by the Irish writer Robert Cromie of having stolen from his novel "A Plunge into