Samuel Johnson approaches the Prince George about patronizing his English Dictionary. Johnson already published his dictionary in 1755, seven years before the Prince was born. Johnson died in 1784, over 25 years before Prince George became Regent. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley are portrayed as Johnson's bodyguards, despite Coleridge's being only 12 years old when Johnson died, and the other two not having been born. There is also a reference to Jane Austen, who was only 9 years old at Johnson's death, and the Battle of the Nile which was fought in 1798.
During his dream, he asks the transformed Baldrick "Who gave you permission to turn into an Alsatian?" This is in reference to the dog breed officially named the "German Shepherd Dog," which did not exist until 1899.
While Baldrick and Blackadder discuss the dictionary which Baldrick has just burned to produce the large fire burning behind them, the hiss of the gas used to produce the flames can be heard.
Blackadder refers to his novel as a "roller-coaster". This term was coined by two Americans in 1887, when King George IV (the Prince Regent) had been dead for 57 years.
When Samuel Johnston first enters and is talking to the Prince about completing his dictionary, the radio mic is visible under his wig in close up shots.
Blackadder rues that he could have been a millionaire because of his novel Edmund a butler's tale. Yet the manuscript was the one that Baldric first burnt. So either Samuel Johnson still had a copy or returned it to Blackadder but Blackadder has a surprise reaction when Johnson mentions how much money the novel would have made and rues that Baldric burnt it.
Blackadder declares that Sir Thomas More was 'burned alive' for 'refusing to recant his Catholicism'. More was not burned, but beheaded, and it was for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as the Supreme Leader of the Church of England, not for refusing to renounce his faith.
Blackadder defines the word "A" as an "impersonal pronoun" when its correct grammatical label is an indefinite article or determiner.
Blackadder calls Baldrick's plan "the stupidest thing we've heard since Lord Nelson's famous signal at the Battle of the Nile, 'England knows Lady Hamilton is a virgin. Poke my eye out and cut off my arm if I'm wrong.'" However, Nelson lost his eye in Corsica and his arm in Tenerife, in actions that took place long before the Battle of the Nile.