In the opening scene, Maggie spells EMCSQU with her blocks, a reference to Albert Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equation. A picture of Einstein also appears on the wall of Dr. Pyror's office. At one point Homer erroneously refers to Einstein as the inventor of the light bulb.
Dr. Pyror compares Bart's proposed work among ordinary children to Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees.
When he puts the calipers against Bart's head, Dr. Pryor conducts what is known as phrenology, a mental state analysis which was discredited in the scientific community by the 1840s.
The conductor of the opera the family attends is named Boris Csuposki, a reference to animator Gábor Csupó. The opera attended by the family is Carmen, by Georges Bizet; the song Bart mocks during the overture is the famous aria called the Toreador Song. The aria is later sung by "the bullfighter".
The Simpsons are playing Scrabble at the beginning of the episode.
After the explosion which occurs when Bart mixes acids and bases, Bart turns green like The Incredible Hulk. Bart is also open about his love of comic books when he opts to read, and then takes, a disregarded Radioactive Man comic book which was being used as by Ms. Mellon's class as a prop in a film about illiteracy.
Homer banging on Bart's locked bedroom door, yelling at Bart to open it, is a reference to the closing credits of The Flintstones where Fred is banging on the locked door outside, yelling at Wilma to open it.
The form of education used at the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children may be a reference to the Sudbury method of education, in which students take complete responsibility and control of their education and choose what they want to do every day.
Introductions[]
Milhouse has black hair in this episode. But in Season 2 onward, his hair is blue, even though his hair was blue in his first appearance.
This is the first episode where Bart uses his soon-to-be-infamous catchphrase "Eat My Shorts!".
A Radioactive Man comic book is seen, though the title character's appearance is vastly different from his appearance in later episodes.
This is the first episode production-wise appearance of Principal Skinner and Milhouse Van Houten, yet Milhouse's actual first appearance was in The Butterfinger Group.
When the Simpsons are playing Scrabble, Homer is complaining that he has no good letters; his slate of letters shows "O-X-I-D-I-Z-E", which is the highest word score one can achieve in Scrabble by using seven letters.
Martin Prince is the train conductor when Bart is told to visualize his IQ problems.
Originally, it was intended that, thanks to Bart's cheating on the IQ test, in addition to Bart being sent to a school for gifted children, Martin would have been sent to a school for intellectually disabled kids.
Bart wears a pink shirt to his first day of class at the "Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children". Homer later (unintentionally) does this same thing in a future episode.
This is the first episode to feature a character naked.
Books on the shelf in Bart's new advanced school classroom include Crime & Punishment, Babylonian Myths, Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, Plato, Dante's Inferno, The Illiad, Design of Computers (remember this is 1990), Astrophysics, Wana by Emile Zona, Puskin, Shakespeare I-XV, Quantum Mechanics, and the Life of Leonardo.
The Simpsons attend the opera "Carmen", advertised as "Tonight Only in Russian".
After he is dubbed a genius, Bart's Principal Skinner graffiti is framed and labeled as a work of art entitled "The Principal" by Bart Simpson.
Bart's word Kwyjibo is later used in Champions Online as the name of a super-powered gorilla. Here it's spelled with a Q instead of a K. It is also used in the demo version of the LucasArts game The Secret of Monkey Island, also released in 1990.
Some people consider this to be a prequel to "Bart Gets an "F"".
When Martin is telling Principal Skinner that Bart is spray painting the wall, there is a blonde girl in the background that resembles Lisa except that her hair is more spikey than Lisa's and is wearing a blue-green dress.
This is the first episode to air in 1990, and thus is the first to air in the 1990s.
This is the first episode without a title reference.
This is the first episode to have the 1993 20th Television logo with the bylineless on it.
The plotline for this episode was inspired by Jon Vitti's own childhood, where several of his peers did not take IQ tests seriously and ended up suffering for it academically. He also reversed the situation due to Bart not really coming across as intelligent in the first place.
This episode, or more specifically, its animation quality, is actually the reason why the show was allowed to air another episode, as the extremely poor animation quality for "Some Enchanted Evening" meant that if this episode had as bad of animation quality as the aforementioned episode, the show would have been cancelled.
Despite this, however, because this is only the 2nd episode of the show to be produced and made, there are some things in this episode about the animation that are not seen in any other episodes. Here are the differences as follows:
Almost every single background in this episode (along with Homer's Odyssey & parts of Some Enchanted Evening) utilized lots of gradients that would usually consist of any type of color and any shade of white. The backgrounds are so slightly cruder as opposed to the polished style that they obtained after these 2 episodes, and some of the interior of the Simpson home is different (example being that the kitchen's wall color is orange rather than light-blue.).
The character designs and style are somewhat slightly cruder, and you could argue that they are off-model somewhat.
Although not exactly at the same exact extent as Some Enchanted Evening's original cut when it 1st came back from South Korea, this episode's animation style for character movement is noticeably a little bit more fluid and energetic compared to other Season 1 episodes.
Ironically, regarding the catalyst for Bart admitting he cheated in the IQ test, Bart would later be revealed to be gifted in chemistry in Haw-Haw Land.
The opera conductor's name is Boris Csupovski, a clever reference to animation studio Klasky-Csupo, who oversaw animation for The Simpsons from Seasons 1-3.
Homer comments to Bart that for generations Simpson men have dreamed of outsmarting someone. Homer does just that, by outsmarting Cooder in "Bart Carny".
Someone suggests to Bart that he build a rocket ship. In "She of Little Faith", Bart worked on a rocket ship.
Dr. Pyror explains that high intelligence is usually caused by heredity. In "Homer Loves Flanders", it is mentioned that genetics are making Homer a loser. The Simpsons' genetic intelligence was further explored in "Lisa the Simpson".
In this episode, Mrs. Krabappel states that the IQ tests will have no effect on the students' grades and are merely a reflection of the students' future success, but in the "Treehouse of Horror VI" story, "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace", she encourages the class to fail their latest standardized test because the school gets more funding this way.
Principal Skinner has a secretary and an intercom in this episode. However, in "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part One)", Principal Skinner says he doesn't have a secretary or an intercom (possibly due to budget cuts).
Goofs[]
Homer missing his hair
Milhouse with black hair
Marge believes 'He' to be worth 2 points, but in reality, it is worth 5, as H = 4 points and E = 1 point.
In one shot at the breakfast table, Homer is missing the wisps of hair at the top of his head, and it appears that Bart’s forehead is unusually tall.
When Ms. Mellon writes the solution to the RDRR calculus problem, she omits the 'r' variable in the second line, causing the equation to read as if the 3 is squared instead of the r.
Marcia Wallace's name is misspelled as "Marsha Wallace" in the closing credits. This may have been intended, as cast members sometimes use a pseudonym.
The error has been corrected on the complete First Season DVD.
Earlier in the episode, Milhouse's hair is the regular blue, but later in the episode, it appears to be black.
Homer opens Bart's door to get into his room to check up on him in one scene. When he takes a look at Bart’s comic book after Bart told him what "os os!" means, the door is back closed. However, in the very next shot facing straight to the door, the door is oddly back open somehow without Homer or anyone else interacting with it in any way.
When Bart heads in and locks himself in his room, running away from Homer, the photograph of Maggie on the left side next to the door on the wall has a blue background with her in an orange crib, but two shots later, when Homer's pounding on Bart's door, the background color in the photo somehow became the same color as the crib. Then again, since this is one of the show's oldest episodes, animation errors are to be expected.
In a shot of the classroom the background is just blue.
Homer doesn't scream during the opening credits, yet his mouth appears to be doing so.
When the kids walk by Skinner, two errors happen in one: Skinner's hair flickers from gray to brown for a brief second and a kid's hair changes shades of blue in about a second.
Production Notes[]
The episode's table read was shown as early as May 15th, 1989.
