First use of the holo-communicator.
The scenes on the USS Defiant bridge showing the crew operating the ship manually and relaying communications through Nog were written as a homage to a similar scene in the submarine movie Run Silent Run Deep (1958), which was also the basis for Balance of Terror (1966).
Eddington continually addresses Sisko as "Javert", a reference to Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. Quoting Hugo: "Javert's misguided and self-destructive pursuit of justice is more tragic than villainous. He is "a compound" of "respect for authority and hatred of rebellion, but he made them almost bad by dint of his exaggeration of them".
Malinche was Cortes's Aztec mistress who betrayed her people, leading to the destruction of the indigenous people of Mexico.
This is a sequel to For the Cause (1996), and the Michael Eddington/Maquis story arc would later be resolved in Blaze of Glory (1997).