Brother from the Same Planet/References

General

References/Trivia

Appearances

Gags

Credits

Quotes

Trivia

• Bart was also replaced in a later episode by a robot named David.
• The chalkboard gag "The Principal's toupee is not a frisbee" is the only mention of Principal Skinner's hair being fake in the entire series. Therefore, it is safe to assume it is not true.
• The name "IP Freely" was previously used in "Homer's Odyssey" by Bart as a crank call to Moe. This time the call was made by drunken fraternity boys, who were the alleged sources to the fight of a giant lizard in Downtown Springfield to Kent Brockman.
• The episode's title is a play on John Sayles' movie The Brother from Another Planet. The Simpsons has also spoofed this title with the episode title "Brother from Another Series".
• The plot of this episode is similar to a Ren and Stimpy cartoon produced around the same time and vice versa. Dan Castellaneta provided the voices of Ren and Stimpy in this sequence instead of Billy West.
  • Incidentally, Rough Draft Studios does the animation for both The Ren and Stimpy Show and The Simpsons, while Billy West would become one of the main voice actors of Futurama, another Matt Groening creation.

Cultural references

• The R-rated movie Bart's friends are so excited about seeing is Barton Fink, a 1991 drama about a struggling screenwriter in the 1940s, which presumably is far from what they would hope to see.
  • A later episode, "Bart the Fink", would take its title from that film, which, like The Simpsons, is produced by 20th Century Fox.
• Milhouse writes "Trab pu kcip" on the wall, which is "Pick up Bart" backwards, a reference to Danny Torrance writing "redrum" (which is "murder" backwards) in The Shining.
• The woman that Bart mistakes for Homer in an ironic touch sings "I Am Woman".
• While Bart is stuck in the storm waiting for Homer, a nun is lifted up by the wind, a reference to the TV series The Flying Nun.
• The grapefruit scene is a reference of the James Cagney movie, The Public Enemy.
• When Bart tells himself "Eye of the Tiger, Bart" he is making a reference to what Rocky says to himself in Rocky III.
• When Homer tells Bart "You've been flouncing around with that floozy of a bigger brother of yours, haven't you? Haven't you!" he is making a reference to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when Richard Burton accuses his wife of adultery.
• Skinner makes a reference to the movie Psycho when he says "Oh... there's mother now." This is the first time Skinner has been portrayed as a Norman Bates-like character.
• At one point, Bart tells Homer that he would fake the excitement he would have when Homer pushed him on the swing and demonstrates it, to Homer's horror. This is a reference to the infamous fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally.
• A section of the fight between Homer and Tom parodies the introduction to Street Fighter II.
• At one point, Bart watches "Tuesday Night Live", which is a parody of NBC's Saturday Night Live. At a commercial break, Bart comments that he misses Joe Piscopo, who was a castmember on the show from 1980 to 1984.
  • Krusty appears on a sketch called "The Big Ear Family", which could be a reference to either the Coneheads or The Widettes; The Coneheads being a family of aliens with large cone-shaped heads, and the Widettes being a family of people with abnormally-large rear ends.
• The fight between Homer and Tom mirrors a fight at the end of The Quiet Man, a John Wayne movie.