The line, "Water? Never touch the stuff. Fish f*** in it," comes from a quote attributed to W.C. Fields.
All of the members of Woodhouse's squadron/tontine have last names derived from English cheeses (e.g. Stilton, Wensleydale, Buxton, Gloucester etc.). P. G. Wodehouse, creator of the fictional valet Reginald Jeeves for whom the Woodhouse character is named, also has a character named G. D'Arcy "Stilton" Cheesewright, who appears in several Jeeves novels. Furthermore, Wodehouse is also said to have been a regular of 'Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese', an ancient pub in the City of London.
When Woodhouse has a flashback to WWI, his memory mirrors the experiences of Brad Pitt's character, Tristan Ludlow in Legends of the Fall (1994), including killing German soldiers in a trench using a knife, taking scalps, traveling the world and sleeping with multiple women aboard a ship.
Woodhouse's flashback to owning a bar in Tangiers is a reference to Humphrey Bogart's character Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942).
Woodhouse describes Reggie as "in the words of Henley, 'bloodied, but unbowed'." This is a quote from the poem 'Invictus' by British poet William Ernest Henley.