Debut Appearance
Trivia
- Ironically, this is the only Treehouse of Horror episode to have the Treehouse motif, despite the word "Treehouse" in the title of all Halloween specials.
- 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, disco and Violence on TV.
- Paul McCartney's gravestone is a reference to the "Paul is dead" hoax of the 1960s.
- "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 scary tree outside Lisa's bedroom, and the implosion of the house at the end a la 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 humans with a book which translated means "To Serve Man", and solve all the problems of Earth. Curious Earthlings accept invitations of the aliens to see their homeworld and travel 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 this episode.
- This is the only Halloween episode with the normal Gracie Films logo sequence; from Treehouse of Horror II it features a pipe organ playing its jingle, and Treehouse of Horror IV onwards, a scream replaces "shh".
- This is the only Treehouse of Horror in which Kang and Kodos do not attempt to conquer Earth.
- This is the first Treehouse of Horror not to have the cast's names changed due to Halloween e.g. Bat Groening.
- 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 that does not appear for the rest of the episode.
- This is the first appearance of Kang and Kodos and only appearance of Serak the Preprarer.
- iTunes has the airdate of this episode as October 24, 1990.
Cultural references
Airings
Along with every other Treehouse of Horror episode up to XVI, this episode aired as part of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Mania.
