When the boys are disguising El (Millie Bobby Brown) to bring her to the school, they dress her up like Carrie White of the Stephen King novel "Carrie" and subsequent movies: Carrie (1976) & Carrie (2013) and the TV move Carrie (2002). Like Carrie, El also has telekinetic powers.
Executive Producer Shawn Levy plays the Coroner and is seen briefly when Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) bursts out of the morgue refusing to believe the body is her son.
The title (and subsequent scene shown later in the series with the boys following their compasses along train tracks) pays homage to Stephen King's short story 'The Body', which is included in his collection book "Different Seasons" (1982) and later adapted into Stand by Me (1986).
A young government agent called "Shepherd" is seen tearing his way through a living portal in an otherwise solid wall, to enter a shadow dimension. Alex Shepherd, the protagonist of the video game, Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008), is a young soldier who frequently cuts or tears his way through living portals in otherwise solid walls, to make his way through a shadow dimension.
When the sheriff goes to the morgue to view Will's (Noah Schnapp) body, he talks to the officer reading "Cujo", later made into the film Cujo (1983), and says he spoke with O'Bannon. O'Bannon is likely a reference to Dan O'Bannon, screenwriter of Alien (1979) and director of The Return of the Living Dead (1985).