Difference between revisions of "Treehouse of Horror/References"

Revision as of 05:07, August 1, 2021

Cultural references

Opening and wraparounds

• Marge warning the viewers that the episode is scary is a reference to the 1931 film Frankenstein.
• A fly says "ow!" as it flies into the bug zapper, a reference to The Fly.
• Bart calls "The Raven" tame by the standards of modern films like the first part of Friday the 13th

Bad Dream House

• The Evil House design is based on the house from Psycho.
• The walls of the house bleeding is a reference to The Amityville Horror.
• Maggie's head turning 360 degrees is a reference to The Exorcist.
• The house being built on an ancient Indian burial ground is a reference to Poltergeist. The house also explodes in the same manner.
• Graves in the Indian Burial Ground include Pocahontas, Sacagawea and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Hungry are the Damned

• The book How to Cook for Forty Humans is a reference to The Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man".
• The Rigellians show the Simpsons the game Pong.

The Raven

• The segment is based on The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
• The Raven narrator's cup has "Amontillado" written on it, referencing The Cask of Amontillado.
• Books The Raven drops include The Pit and the Pendulum, The Telltale Heart and The Purloined Letter.

Trivia

• Despite the word "treehouse" being in all of The Simpsons Halloween specials, this special is the only one to have the treehouse motif.
• The tombstones at the beginning read from first to last, and left to right, in all caps:
  • Ezekiel Simpson
  • Ishmael Simpson
  • Cornelius V. Simpson
  • Garfield
  • The Grateful Dead
  • Casper, the friendly boy
  • Elvis
  • Your name here
  • Paul McCartney
    • Paul McCartney's gravestone is a reference to the "Paul is dead" hoax of the 1960s.
  • Disco and Violence on TV.
• Edgar Allan Poe is credited as a writer for the skit "The Raven".
• This is the only Halloween episode with the normal Gracie Films logo sequence; in "Treehouse of Horror II" and "III" it features a pipe organ playing its jingle, and from "Treehouse of Horror IV" onwards, a scream replaces "shh".
• Kang and Kodos first appear in this episode, and Serak the Preprarer makes his only appearance in this episode.

Continuity

• The home-world of Kang, Kodos and Serak is referenced as Rigel 7. It is next mentioned in "Treehouse of Horror IX" and physically appears in "Treehouse of Horror XXII" and in "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner".

Goofs

• In "Hungry are the Damned", when Kang and Kodos' spaceship first arrived, Homer says that the burgers are getting cold. The burger he is eating has a bite out of it. However, in a close-up shot, it is a whole burger again.
• In the same segment, at the very end, the family looks up at Kang and Kodos' ship and Marge's necklace is white like Lisa's, when it should be red.