Into the Woods/References

Cultural references

 * The story title may be a reference to one or both of two books by :
 * , which tells the story of . In 1992, McCandless went into the Alaska wilderness on a personal quest and ended up starving to death.
 * , which tells the story of the.
 * Due to Bart's preoccupation with starvation during the story, Into the Wild is the more likely possibility.
 * When Martin and Lisa discuss the hardships the pioneers endured, Lisa mentions the 's having had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive.
 * Bart sarcastically asks if the Donner Party were too cheap to install on their wagons.
 * When Bart and Milhouse pooh-pooh Lisa's mention of the Donner Party, Lisa tells Martin to ignore them, as "They think that 'The Old West' is an actor who played Batman on TV", a reference to Adam West.
 * Martin tells Lisa not to stoop to the level of the Philistines (referring to Bart and Milhouse). In the Bible, the were the most prominent enemy of the nation of Israel, but Martin is using "Philistine" in, a term for an uncultured person.
 * The bear statue with the sign admonishing visitors to not smoke in the woods ("Keep your butts out of the forest") resembles.
 * After Bart and Milhouse get lost, they get hungry and Bart recalls other accounts of cannibalism, including " in the ".
 * The story's plotline is reminiscent of the M*A*S*H television episode "", where Winchester and Klinger get lost in a windstorm and endure a night stopped on the road. The next morning, after the storm abates, they discover that they were only two hundred yards from camp.

Continuity

 * was first seen in the television episode "Kamp Krusty".
 * Bart also gets lost in the woods (albeit with Homer rather than Milhouse, and with a considerably different outcome) in the episode "The Call of the Simpsons".