Star Trek Picard: Every Easter Egg & Hidden Reference From 'Nepenthe'
16. Sorrow Not Sorrow
In keeping with Star Trek: Picard's tradition of naming planets after episode-appropriate Earth mythology (see Vashti in "Absolute Candor", Hypatia and Vergessen in "Stardust City Rag"), the Borg Queen's spacial trajector deposits Picard and Soji on a planet called Nepenthe.
Nepenthe (literally translated from Ancient Greek as "not-sorrow") is a medicine to cure grief and suffering from Homer's "Odyssey". Riker and Troi came to Nepenthe for its regenerative soil in the hopes it would save their son, Thad, who had contracted mendaxic neurosclerosis – a silicon-based virus with no cure following the synth ban.
Despite the Riker-Troi family's rustic lifestyle, the planet apparently has a spacefaring infrastructure at a place called Infinity Lake, where a former captain named Rupert Crandall (who's even older than Picard) resides.
The planet is also inhabited by some kind of venomous, horned, rabbits which make good sausage: Bunnicorns. Bennicorns are (according to Michael Chabon) a reference to the horned puppy native to planet Alfa 177 from The Original Series episode "The Enemy Within".