It took me years to understand that reference fully. When I saw UHF originally it bugged me that I knew it was a reference to something but I didn't know what. Finally, a decade later I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind and I finally put two and two together.
Due to my age when I watched UHF I had not seen many of the movies that it referenced: Conan the Barbarian, Rambo, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Close Encounters - only over time did I come to appreciate it.
