Difference between revisions of "Treehouse of Horror/References"

Revision as of 11:03, May 22, 2014

Cultural references

• Frankenstein: Marge warns the audience that the show is very scary
• Psycho: The house's shape.
• Life in Hell: Binky appears as Bart's toy
• The Amityville Horror: Blood streams from the walls
• The Exorcist: Maggie turns her head 360 degrees.
• Poltergeist: the house is built on an ancient Indian burial ground
• The Fall of the House of Usher: the house implodes
• The Fly: a fly cries out "Ow!" as it hits a bug zapper
• Twilight Zone: the dust-blowing sequence
• The Raven: Lisa reads this story
• The Cask of Amontillado: Homer's cup has Amontillado written on it
• Lenore: the character Lenore also appears in The Raven
• The Pit and the Pendulum: Raven Bart drops this on Homer's head
• The Telltale Heart: Raven Bart drops this on Homer's head
• The Purloined Letter: Raven Bart drops this on Homer's head
• Friday the 13th: Bart states that the "The Raven" is as scary as the first part of the movie.

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.
• "Bad Dream House" parodies a number of haunted house films. The opening image of the house shows that one side resembles the house from "The Amityville Horror" house. Much of the plot follows the events of the film "Poltergeist", such as a spooky tree outside Lisa's bedroom, and the implosion of the house at the end of The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Bart, as the raven, knocks several Edgar Allan Poe stories off the bookshelf, including "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Tell-Tale Heart", and "The Purloined Letter".
• The book "To Serve Forty Humans" is a reference to a Twilight Zone episode where aliens greet people with a book which means "To Serve Man" when translated. The curious people accept the aliens' invitations to see their homeworld, and they travel with the aliens on their spaceships. One woman accepts such an invitiation, but is stopped by her brother, who has properly translated the book and is shouting "It is a cookbook! It is a cookbook!"
• 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".
• This is the only "Treehouse of Horror" special where the cast is not accredited with Halloween-like names.
• The Indian Burial Ground under the house in "Bad Dream House" contains the grave of Mahatma Gandhi.
• In "Hungry are the Damned," when the Rigellians are measuring the Simpsons' weight, along with Kang, Kodos, and Serak, there is a fourth unnamed Rigellian with them who does not appear in the rest of the episode.
• Kang and Kodos first appear in this episode, and Serak the Preprarer makes his only appearance in this episode.

Goofs

• In "Hungry Are The Damned," 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.
  • Around the same time, 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.

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.