The episode's title comes from the Bruce Springsteen album "Darkness on the Edge of Town," released in 1978.
The "Turtle Vision" night vision goggles that the turtles wear is very similar to Sam Fisher's "Trident Goggles" that Sam Fisher in the Splinter Cell video game series wears. The first Splinter Cell game was released in 2002, a year before the release of the 2003 Ninja Turtles series, and Fisher's goggles feature both green colored night vision and infrared heat vision, just as the Turtle Vision goggles do.